LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


Mrs.  SARAH  P.  WALS  WORTH. 

Received  October,  1894. 
Accessions.  No.  ^^6^  (}.      Class  No. 


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UNBELIEF 


IN 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


AS  CONTRASTED  WITH  ITS  EARLIER  AND 
LATER  HISTORY 


BEING  THE 

fanning fj am  Cectnres  for  1880 


'HFr 


BY   JOHN   CAIRNS,  D.D. 

PRINCIPAL  AND   PROFESSOR    OF    SYSTEMATIC    THEOLOGY  AND  APOLOGETICS 
THE  UNITED   PRESBYTERIAN  COLLEGE 


NEW    YORK 
HARPER   &  BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN  SQUARE 

1881 


PREFACE. 


THE  author  has  to  express  his  best  thanks  to  the  trustees  of 
the  Cunningham  Lectures  for  the  great  honor  they  did  him  in 
associating  his  name  with  a  lectureship  which  perpetuates  one 
of  the  greatest  memories  in  the  Free  Church  and  in  Scottish 
theology,  and  which  has  gathered  around  it  already  so  many 
works  of  lasting  interest  and  value.  It  was  from  no  lack  or 
decay  of  ability,  scholarship,  and  zeal,  within  her  own  borders, 
as  every  succeeding  lecture  shows,  that  the  Free  Church,  in 
this  case,  went  beyond  them,  but  in  the  same  enlarged  and 
generous  spirit  which  has  marked  her  whole  history.  May  this 
spirit  be  cherished  and  displayed  on  all  sides;  and  then  the 
.visible  unity  of  the  branches  of  the  Christian  Church — a  unity 
which  transcends  all  remaining  differences,  however  these  may 
be  severally  regarded — will  be  one  of  the  best  replies  to  unbe- 
lief, and  one  of  the  greatest  helps  to  the  edification  of  the  body 
of  Christ. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

UNBELIEF    OF    THE    FIRST    FOUR    CENTURIES. 

Contrast  with  Eighteenth  Century. — First  Contrast:  Christianity  then 
Churned  the  Name  of  Religious  Liberty;  now  Unbelief. — Second 
Contrast :  Unbelief  then  Allied  to  Polytheism  ;  now  Separated  from 
All  Positive  Religions. — Third  Contrast:  Unbelief  then  Acknowl- 
edged Scripture  Books ;  now  Denies  Them Pages  11  to  30 

LECTURE   II. 

UNBELIEF  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

Causes  of  Post-Reformation  Unbelief. — Divisions  of  the  Christian  Church. 
— Religious  Wars. — Falling-away  of  Culture  from  Christianity. — Sev- 
enteenth-century Apologists. — Grotius  and  Pascal. — Schools  of  Unbe- 
lief.— Reserve  in  All. — Deistic,  Lord  Herbert,  Hobbes  ;  Pantheistic, 
Spinoza ;  Sceptical,  Bayle 31  to  50 

LECTURE   III. 

UNBELIEF    IN    THE    EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY. ENGLISH    DEISM. 

Causes  of  Deism. — Inferiority  of  Deistical  Writers. — Blount,  a  Forerun- 
ner.—  Tohmd. —  His  Successive  Positions. —  Pantheisticon. —  Deism 
Proper. — Collins  and  Prophecy. — Woolston  and  Miracles. — Tindal 
and  Light  of  Nature. — Chubb  and  Christian  Morals. — Morgan  and 
Old  Testament.— Sceptics  :  Dodwell,  Bolingbroke,  Hume,  Gibbon. — 
Causes  of  Failure  of  Deism 51  to  87 

LECTURE  IV. 

UNBELIEF    IN    FRANCE. THE    ENCYCLOPEDISTS. 

Causes  of  French  Unbelief.  — Persecution.  — Jansenism.  — Corruption  in 
Church  and  State. — Voltaire:  his  Connection  with  England;  Liter- 
ary Career.— Frederick  the  Great, — The"Encyclop6die." — Jean  Calas 
and  Toleration. — Characteristics  of  Voltaire's  Attack  on  Christian- 
ity.— Ignorance  of  Scripture. — Insufficient  Account  of  the  Origin  and 
Success  of  Christianity. — Doubtful  Natural  Religion. — Hypocrisy  of 


viii  CONTENTS. 

his  Last  Confession. — Rousseau. — The  Savoy  Vicar. — Character  of 
Jesus  Christ. — Letters  from  the  Mountain. — Concessions  to  Chris- 
tianity. —  Atheism.  —  La  Mettrie. —  Helvetius.  —  Diderot. —  D'Hol- 
bach. — Revolution. — Causes  of  Failure  of  Encyclopedism. — Concor- 
dat.— Chateaubriand's  "  Genie  du  Christianisme." — Fruitless  Strife 
of  Rome  and  Unbelief.  —  Service  of  French  Unbelief  to  Eng- 
land   Pages  88  to  121 

LECTURE  V. 

UNBELIEF    IN    GERMANY. RATIONALISM. 

Differences  of  Rationalism  from  English  and  French  Unbelief. — Popular 
Philosophy. — Bahrdt;  Critical  School. — Decay  of  Orthodoxy.— 
Semler. — Eichhorn. — Canon  of  the  Old  Testament. — Origin  of  the 
Gospels. — Meagre  Doctrinal  Creed. — Paulus. — Naturalist  Theory. — 
Reirnarus. — "  Wolfenbuttel  Fragments." — "Plan  of  Jesus  and  his 
Disciples." — Lessing:  his  Religion  a  Problem. — Concealment  of  the 
Fragmentist. — His  Critical  Position. — "Education  of  the  Human 
Race."— "Arui-Goetze."— "Nathan  the  Wise."— Alleged  Panthe- 
ism.— Ethical  School. — Kant.— Defects  of  his  "Religion  innerhalb 
der  Grenzeu  der  blossen  Vernunft." — Recovery  of  Germany  from 
Rationalism 122  to  101 

LECTURE  VI. 

UNBELIEF  IN  THE   NINETEENTH  CENTURY. STRAUSS. RENAN. 

MILL. 

Tendencies  of  Nineteenth  Century. — Deeper  Anti-Supernaturalism. — Nat- 
ural Explanation  of  Christ  and  Christianity. — Strauss. — First  "Leben 
Jesu"  in  1835.— Mythical  Theory.— Replies. — Second  "Leben  Jesu  " 
in  1864.  —  Relation  to  Baur  and  Tubingen  School. — Critic-ism  of 
Amended  Theory. — Third  and  Last  Period  of  Strauss. — Atheism.— 
Renan. — French  Unbelief  from  Revolutionary  Period. —  "Vie  de 
Je'sus"  and  Succeeding  Works. — View  of  the  Gospels. — Failure  in 
Estimating  Character  and  Life  of  Christ. — Inadequate  Account  of 
Success  of  Christianity,  and  Life  of  Apostle  Paul.— Immoral  Atti- 
tude towards  Doubt  within  the  Church. — John  Stuart  Mill. — Views 
of  Natural  Theology. —Possibility  of  a  Revelation. —  Sense  of  the 
Worth  of  Christianity  and  Greatness  of  Christ. — Lessons  from  these 
Studies. — Fluctuation  of  Unbelief. — Advance  of  Christianity. — Ne- 
cessity of  Maintaining  its  Supernatural  Character 162  to  193 


APPENDIX. 

NOTE  A. — The  Eighteenth  Century  as  One  of  Progress 195 

NOTE  B.— Dutch  Edition  of  Grotius's  De  Veritate 195 

NOTE  C.— Herbert's  Notitia3  Communes J  98 

NOTE  D. — Did  Bayle  Formally  Reject  Christianity  ? 1 98 

NOTE  E.— Woolston's  Imprisonment  and  Death 199 


CONTENTS.  ix 

NOTE  F. — Warburton's  "  Divine  Legation  of  Moses  " Page  201 

NOTE  G.— Relation  of  Rousseau  to  Christianity 204 

NOTE  H. — Doctrinal  Creed  of  Eichhorn 207 

NOTIS  I. — The  Alleged  Pantheism  of  Lessing 208 

NOTE  K. — A  Critical  Theory  of  the  Gospels  necessary  to  a  Life  of 

Christ ". 209 

NOTE  L. — The  Quarrel  of  Strauss  with  Rationalism 211 

NOTE  M. — John  Stuart  Mill's  Last  Word  on  the  Character  of  Christ.  212 

NOTE  N. — Dr.  Baur's  Sketch  of  Pauline  Justification 213 


LECTURE  I. 

UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES. 

Contrast  with  Eighteenth  Century. — First  Contrast:  Christianity  then 
Claimed  the  Name  of  Religious  Liberty ;  now  Unbelief.  —  Second 
Contrast :  Unbelief  then  Allied  to  Polytheism  ;  now  Separated  from 
All  Positive  Religions.  —  Third  Contrast :  Unbelief  then  Acknowl- 
edged Scripture  Books ;  now  Denies  Them. 

THE  subject  which  I  have  chosen  for  these  lectures  is  a  part 
of  the  great  history  of  the  conflict  between  Christianity  and 
Unbelief.  That  history  is  to  a  large  extent  still  unwritten; 
and  though  some  periods  have  received  comparatively  full 
treatment,  others  lie  in  shadow,  while  inferences  and  generali- 
zations from  the  whole  are  as  yet  scanty  and  defective.  It  is 
with  the  hope  of  adding  something,  however  little,  to  this  lit- 
erature, which,  rightly  considered,  is  the  literature  of  faith,  and 
a  branch  of  Christian  apologetics,  that  I  have  selected  this 
topic ;  and,  painful  as  much  that  arises  in  the  study  of  it  must 
be  to  Christian  minds,  it  is  not  without  that  solid  and  enduring 
benefit  which  the  struggles  and  reactions  of  error,  historically 
considered,  sooner  or  later  bring  to  the  side  of  truth. 

I  have  chosen  as  the  main  theme  of  discussion  the  unbelief 
of  the  eighteenth  century,*  because  this  period  marks,  in  some 
sense,  the  culmination  of  unbelief  in  the  history  of  Christianity, 
for  it  was  then  more  widely  diffused,  and  with  less  vigorous  re- 
sistance, than  before  or  since ;  it  was  more  radical,  in  its  antag- 
onism, at  least  than  in  any  former  century  ;  and  it  enjoyed  cer- 
tain extraordinary  advantages,  both  of  a  social  and  political  nat- 
ure, which  put  all  its  alleged  powers  of  remoulding  the  world 
to  the  test  of  a  conspicuous  and  decisive  experiment.  What 
the  first  centuries  are  in  the  history  of  Christianity  the  eigh- 
teenth is  in  the  history  of  unbelief,  and  hence  its  products  and 
results  are  of  the  most  typical  and  suggestive  character.* 

It  would  be  impossible,  however,  within  the  limits  of  this 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  A. 


12         UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

course,  either  to  narrate  the  history  or  examine  the  literary  and 
other  developments  of  eighteenth-century  unbelief,  when  sur- 
veyed by  itself,  with  any  measure  of  fulness.  Hence  I  have 
sought  to  contract,  without  obscuring,  the  field,  by  introducing 
the  element  of  relation  to  other  periods.  And  as  even  this  is 
too  large,  and  would  demand  a  longer  inquiry  than  is  possible 
into  relations  of  connection  and  dependence  as  subsisting  be- 
tween the  unbelief  of  that  century  and  what  preceded  and  fol- 
lowed, I  have  confined  the  point  of  observation  to  contrast,  in- 
cluding, of  course,  comparison,  but  laying  stress  upon  differ- 
ences, rather  than  upon  what  belongs  to  unbelief  in  all  places 
and  in  all  ages.  We  thus  obtain  a  perfectly  definite  subject, 
and  one  which,  by  presenting  this  important  century,  in  the 
light  of  other  marking  periods,  may  cast  illustration  on  the 
whole  history  and  genius  of  unbelief. 

It  needs  only  to  be  further  premised  that  by  Unbelief  I  mean 
unbelief  in  the  divine  origin  and  claims  of  Christianity.  It  will 
be  necessary  to  speak  of  unbelief  in  God,  in  moral  order,  in  fut- 
ure existence ;  but  these  are  only  considered  as  relative  to,  and 
associated  with,  unbelief  in  the  Christian  revelation ;  and  the 
developments  of  atheism,  pantheism,  or  absolute  scepticism 
that  are  to  be  taken  account  of  do  not  enter  merely  or  chiefly 
as  chapters  in  the  history  of  speculation,  but  as  bearing  upon 
the  resistance  offered  to  Christianity. 

Thus  considered,  the  unbelief  of  the  eighteenth  century  seems 
to  me  to  require  to  be  estimated  in  the  light  of  the  period  be- 
fore itself,  and  of  that  which  comes  after.  We  cannot  sudden- 
ly descend  upon  it,  without  considering  the  post-Reformation 
history  and  tendencies,  out  of  which  it  grew,  which  lie  mainly 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  And  as  little  can  we  abruptly 
leave  it,  without  reviewing  its  fruits,  consequences,  and  real  or 
supposed  advances  beyond  itself,  in  the  century  to  which  we 
ourselves  belong.  These  foregoing  and  succeeding  periods 
seem  thus  indispensable  to  a  right  and  comprehensive  estimate. 
But  as  there  was  an  earlier  unbelief  in  the  world,  largely  differ- 
ent from  any  that  succeeded,  and  yet  bound  to  all  later  periods 
by  the  common  attribute  of  rejection  of  Christianity — I  mean 
the  unbelief  of  the  early  centuries — it  seems  desirable  not  to 
exclude  this  from  view ;  but  as  far  as  the  great  diversity  of  the 
grounds  and  principles  of  resistance  allows,  to  exhibit  this  also 
in  the  series, -and  thus  to  introduce  the  earliest  prototype  of  the 
eighteenth-century  unbelief  and  of  all  besides. 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES.        13 

Our  plan  then  will  be  to  sketch  rapidly  the  unbelief  of  the 
first  Christian  centuries,  noting  especially  such  features  as  con- 
trast with  later  manifestations;  then  to  trace  the  rise  and 
growth  of  the  post  -  Reformation  unbelief,  especially  in  such 
forms  as  do  not  yet  reach  the  eighteenth-century  mark ;  then 
more  fully  to  dwell  on  this  central  part  of  our  subject  in  its 
various  national  and  other  peculiarities ;  and  to  close  by  show- 
ing to  what  extent  and  in  what  fields  of  conflict  unbelief  has 
altered  its  ground  since  its  eighteenth-century  utterances  and 
conclusions. 

Nothing,  in  many  respects,  can  be  less  like  the  position  of 
eighteenth-century  writers — and  we  may  take  in  seventeenth- 
century  writers  too — in  opposing  Christianity  than  that  of  its 
first  antagonists.  The  principal  points  of  contrast,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  are  these :  First,  that  the  deniers  of  Christianity  in  the  j, 
early  ages  were  on  the  defensive,  and  were  defending  a  publicly 
held  and  settled  religion,  among  other  means,  by  force;  where- 
as the  unbelief  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  aggressive,  hostile 
to  all  existing  religious  institutions,  and  professedly  based  on 
reason.  Secondly,  that  the  deniers  of  Christianity  in  the  early 
ages  made  common  cause  with  polytheism,  and  thus  admitted 
the  principle  of  a  divine  revelation,  as  well  as  the  legitimacy  of 
all  its  supernatural  evidence ;  whereas  the  unbelief  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  rejected  every  form  of  revealed  religion,  and 
made  light  of  all  supernatural  evidence.  And,  thirdly,  that 
the  deniers  of  Christianity  in  the  early  ages  granted,  with  hardly 
an  exception,  the  genuineness  and  integrity  of  the  Christian 
documents;  while  these,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  were  largely 
and  strenuously  disputed  and  denied.  To  the  proof  and  illus- 
tration of  these  points  the  remainder  of  this  lecture  shall  be 
devoted. 

I.  Our  first  point  of  contrast  then  is,  that  the  unbelief  of  the 
first  Christian  centuries,  unlike  that  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
defended  an  accepted  and  publicly  professed  religion,  and  de- 
fended it,  among  other  means,  by  force.  When  the  Christian 
Church  first  came  forth  to  secure  by  the  struggle  of  nearly 
three  centuries  the  unhindered  expression  of  its  faith  and  wor- 
ship, it  was  not  so  much  by  any  abstract  theories  of  religious 
liberty  as  by  the  living  strength  of  its  conviction,  which  re- 
fnsi-d  to  be  suppressed  or  falsified,  that  it  overcame.  But  there 


14         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

naturally  grew  up  with  a  doctrine  which  so  exalted  the  worth 
of  every  individual  soul,  and  which  demanded  such  stern  resist- 
ance to  idolatry  or  defection,  a  new  conception  of  the  rights  of 

*\  conscience,  and  an  engrafting  upon  the  literature  of  the  world 
of  new  modes  of  expression  for  this  hitherto  unclaimed  privi- 
lege. The  Christian  apologists,  while  pleading  for  the  truth  of 
Christianity,  necessarily  asserted  the  divinely  given  right  of  all 
truth  to  manifestation ;  and  even  from  the  lower  level  of  its 
political  innocence  they  contended  for  its  free  circulation  and 
diffusion.  Hence  such  great  utterances  as  those  of  Tertullian 
in  his  appeal  to  Scapula,  the  Proconsul  of  Africa,  "  Human! 
juris  et  natnralis  potestatis  est  unicuique,  quod  putaverit  colere  ; 
nee  alii  obest  aut  prodest  alterius  religio.  Sed  nee  religionis 
est  cogere  religionem  "  (cap.  ii.) ;  and  also  of  Lactantius,  "  Quis 
enim  tarn  insolens,  tarn  elatus  est,  qui  me  vetet  oculos  in  ca^lum 
tollere?  quis  irnponat  mihi  necessitatem  vel  colendi  quod  nolim, 
vel  quod  velim  uon  colendi."  "  Religio  cogi  non  potest ;  ver- 
bis  potius  quam  verberibus  res  agenda  est,  ut  sit  voluntas."  * 
At  length,  as  the  result  of  innumerable  appeals  and  incredible 
sufferings,  this  argument  practically  conquered,  and  in  the  Milan 
edict  of  the  emperors  Constantine  and  Licinius,  in  313,  the  prin- 
ciple of  a  toleration,  professedly  wider  than  was  needful  for 
Christian  uses,  but  really  due  to  Christian  struggles,  was-enun- 

-—ciated:  "Etiam  aliis  religionis  sua3  vel  observantiae  potestatem 
similiter  apertam  et  liberam  pro  quiete  temporis  nostri,  esse 
concessam,  ut  in  colendo  quod  quisque  delegerit,  habeat  liberam 
facultatem."  f  It  is  only  too  true  that  the  early  Church  itself, 
lifted  to  a  position  of  security  and  even  of  ascendency,  forgot  its 
own  lessons,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  a  man  like  Eusebius,  who, 
having  described  so  pathetically  the  persecutions  of  the  martyrs 
of  Palestine,  looks,  ere  his  career  ends,  with  complacency  on  the 
repressive  measures  of  his  great  friend  Constantine  towards  pa- 
gans and  heretics.  It  is  only  when  orthodox  Christianity  goes, 
as  it  were,  into  opposition  under  the  Arian  emperors,  as  under 
Julian,  that  it  recovers  its  native  language ;  and  the  lofty  ut- 
terances of  Athanasius  recall  the  true  relation  of  the  gospel  to 
liberty  of  conscience,  though  this  is  too  soon  buried  and  lost  in 
the  advancing  tide  of  Cassareo-papacy  in  the  East,  and  of  Ro- 
man absolutism  in  the  West.  The  place  of  Christianity,  as  the 
parent  of  liberty  of  thought  and  the  patron  of  individual  con- 

*  " Div.  Inst.,"  v.  13,  19.  t  Lact.,  " DC  Mort.  Per.,"  48. 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES.        15 

science,  bad  almost  been  forgotten  when  tbe  Reformation  came 
in,  with  struggles  only  second  to  those  of  the  early  Church,  and 
not  without  something  of  tbe  same  inconsistencies  and  relapses, 
to  reassert  not  only  Christian  truth,  but  the  inseparable  connec- 
tion between  that  truth  and  freedom.  When  tins  movement 
had  also  spent  its  impulse,  and  Romanism,  on  the  one  band, 
had  guarded  its  territory  so  as  to  retain  it  fenced  round  with 
its  old  spiritual  and  secular  terrors,  and  Protestantism,  on  the 
other,  inheriting  much  of  prescription,  tradition,  and  vis  inertice 
from  the  system  it  had  dispossessed,  was  losing  its  hold  over  its 
precious  store  of  truth,  and  maintaining  it  largely  as  an  ances- 
tral and  state-defended  institution,  the  unbelief  that  in  these  cir- 
cumstances arose,  as  if  in  entire  oblivion  of  the  earlier  creative 
work  of  Christianity  in  relation  to  free  thought,  took  this  as  its 
own  watchword,  and  claimed  the  honors  of  unfettered  inquiry, 
of  emancipated  reason,  and,  as  far  it  might  be  needed,  of  mar- 
tyrdom. We  find,  to  our  surprise,  the  language  of  Tertullian 
and  Lactantius  starting  up  from  an  entirely  opposite  quarter, 
in  the  form  of  invective  against  superstition,  priestcraft,  and  v'v 
the  brute  and  oppressive  force  of  a  relentless  Christian  despot- 
ism. This  boast  of  mental  liberty  is  common  to  all  the  schools 
of  the  eighteenth  century, — to  Collins,  with  his  "  Discourse  on 
Freethinking  "  in  1713,  near  its  beginning;  to  Voltaire,  in  his 
last  visit  to  Paris  in  1778,  near  its  close,  when  he  laid  his  hand 
on  the  head  of  the  grandson  of  Benjamin  Franklin  and  pro- 
nounced over  him  the  words,  "  God,  Liberty,  Toleration  ;"  and 
to  Reimarus  in  Germany,  whose  first  fragment,  published  by 
Lessing  in  1774,  had  for  its  thesis  and  title  "  On  the  Toleration 
of  Deists."  It  may  be  granted  that  the  reaffirm ation  of  the 
principles  of  religious  liberty,  though  without  the  support  of 
religious  faith,  wrought  in  some  degree  for  good ;  and  that 
once  and  again,  as  in  the  history  of  Voltaire,  the  victims  of  in- 
tolerance, especially  of  Romish  intolerance,  were  earnestly  and 
successfully  befriended  by  the  leaders  and  disciples  of  unbelief. 
Only  it  must  be  held  that  the  solidity  and  depth  of  the  appeal 
to  the  sacredness  of  truth  and  the  rights  of  conscience  general- 
ly bore  no  proportion  to  the  loudness  of  the  cry  ;  otherwise 
there  would  not  have  been  so  widespread  a  disposition  to  assail 
Christianity  in  a  masked  and  disguised  fashion,  and  to  escape 
the  consequences  of  a  frank  confession  of  unbelief  in  reigning 
ideas,  in  a  way  which  contrasts  unspeakably  with  the  openness 
and  martyr-courage  of  the  first  Christian  centuries.  But  with- 


16         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

out  dwelling  on  this  fact,  or  raising  the  question  how  far  the 
watchword  of  liberty  and  independence  of  thought  may  have 
been  genuine  and  useful,  the  point  here  chiefly  to  be  noticed  is, 
that  the  party  of  unbelief,  throughout  the  early  centuries,  does 
not  raise  that  cry  at  all,  but  stands  upon  tradition,  upon  estab- 
lished right,  and,  in  the  ultimate  issue,  upon  blind  force.  These 
statements  hardly  need  any  formal  proof,  so  much  does  the  evi- 
dence of  them  lie  on  the  surface.  Pliny,  in  his  letter  to  Trajan, 
does  not  doubt  that  in  Christians,  irrespective  of  any  argument 
upon  the  merits  of  their  faith,  inflexible  nonconformity  to  pa- 
gan worship  was  to  be  punished.  The  Emperor  Marcus  Aure- 
lius  carries  his  recoil  from  the  obstinacy  of  the  Christians  to 
the  length  of  more  violent  persecution.  Nor  does  one  of  the 
formal  writers  against  the  Christian  cause  interpose  any  word 
of  protest,  but  all  leave  these  appeals  to  liberty  of  thought  and 
rights  of  conscience  entirely  to  Christian  apologists.  Thus 
Celsus,  towards  the  close  of  his  work  against  the  Christians,  as 
reported  by  Origen,  in  urging  his  appeal  to  fall  in  with  pagan 
worship,  grounded  on  the  Homeric  line  which  made  the  king 
the  agent  of  Jupiter,  thus  argues :  "  If  you  break  this  precept, 
justly  will  the  king  punish  you,  for  if  all  should  follow  you, 
nothing  could  save  him  from  being  deserted  and  alone,  and  the 
world  from  being  given  up  to  the  most  lawless  and  rude  bar- 
barians, with  nothing  left  of  your  own  worship  or  true  wisdom 
among  men."  *  So  also  Porphyry,  who,  in  his  letter  to  his  wife, 
Marcella,  insists  much  more  on  the  spirituality  of  worship,  does 
not  rise  above  the  sentiment  that  "  it  is  the  greatest  fruit  of 
piety  to  honor  the  divinity  according  to  the  religion  of  the 
country  "  (mra  ra  ?rarpta).f  It  may  seem  that  in  the  Emperor 
Julian  we  at  length  find  one  who  is  tolerant  on  philosophical 
principles,  or  from  general  ideas  of  religious  duty.  But  though 
the  claim  to  set  aside  persecution  is  undoubtedly  made  by  him, 
it  comes  too  late,  and  is  one  of  the  things  which,  like  his  friend 
the  philosopher  Themistius,  he  had  learned  from  the  Christians, 
and  learned  without  inwardly  adopting.  His  whole  career  is 
an  effort,  not  simply  to  persuade,  but  to  bribe ;  and,  where  it 
could  be  done  without  bloodshed,  to  coerce  his  subjects  back 
into  paganism.  His  prohibition  of  Greek  literature  to  his 
Christian  subjects,  his  severities  in  exacting  the  rebuilding  of 
pagan  temples,  his  expulsion  of  Athanasius  from  Egypt,  and 

*  "  Contra  Cels.,"  bk.  viii.  68.  t  Cap.  xviii. 


UNBELIEF   OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES.        17 

his  connivance  at  acts  of  sanguinary  violence  show  how  little 
his  example  can  do  to  redeem  the  contrast  here  with  later  un- 
belief, and  how  much  nearer  his  heart  lay  the  maxim  which  he 
expresses  in  one  of  his  letters,  that  "  men  might  be  cured  against 
their  will  "  (aKovrag  taaBtu).*  Gibbon  here  gives  up  Julian,  and 
condemns  "the  artful  system  by  which  he  proposed  to  obtain 
the  effects,  without  incurring  the  guilt  or  reproach,  of  persecu- 
tion ;"  |  and  in  this  he  is  for  once  in  harmony  with  Gregory 
Nazianzen,  who  represents  Julian  as  so  dividing  the  parts  be- 
tween himself  and  the  pagan  mob  that  he  left  to  them  the 
deeds  of  violence,  and  took  on  himself  the  work  of  persuasion.^ 

II.  The  next  point  of  difference,  and  one  still  more  impor- 
tant, to  which  we  now  pass,  which  divides  the  unbelief  of  the 
early  Christian  centuries  by  a  great  gulf  from  that  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  is  that  in  rejecting  Christianity  it  made  com- 
mon cause  with  polytheism,  and  thus  admitted  a  professed  reve- 
lation and  the  general  validity  of  all  the  arguments  by  which 
a  revelation  may  be  sustained  ;  whereas  the  eighteenth  century  , 
scouted  all  positive  revelation,  a  polytheistic  one  in  some  re-/ 
spects  more  than  all  others,  and  denied  all  the  evidence  of  ev- j 
ery  positive  revelation  whatever.  This  state  of  the  case  makes  \ 
it  wholly  impossible  that  there  should  be  any  fundamental 
mony  between  Collins  and  Tindal,  between  Voltaire  and  Dide- 
rot, on  the  one  hand,  and  Celsus,  Porphyry,  and  Julian  on  the 
other.  They  are  habitually  ranked  together  on  the  same  roll 
of  unbelief,  but  they  differ  almost  as  much  as  to  their  ultimate 
creed  as  these  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century  did  from 
Hindoos  or  Buddhists,  or  from  disciples  of  Zoroaster.  There  is 
nothing  now  extant  in  the  world  which  represents  that  point 
f  view  of  those  non-Christian  theologians  of  the  first  centuries, 
h  Christianity  has  forever  subverted^ at  least  nothing  but 
polytheism  a  great  deal  more  rude  anu  barbarous ;  but  if  it 
could  have  been  perpetuated  till  last  century,  and  if  the  English 
Deists  and  French  Encyclopedists  could  have  met  its  represent- 
atives fresh  from  the  temples  of  Apollo  and  Minerva,  and  from 
the  mysteries  of  Ceres,  they  would  speedily  have  parted  com- 
pany after  they  had  discovered  that  they  had  indeed  a  number 
of  objections  in  common  to  Christianity  ;  but  that  in  regard  to 

*  Ep.  42.  t  Vol.  ii.,  p.  557,  Bohn's  edition. 

J  Greg.  Niiz.,  Op.,  vol.  i.,  pp.  105,  10G,  1st  tmjXmurtKof  \6yoQ. 


18         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

their  ultimate  conclusions  as  to  worship,  and  their  point  of  de- 
parture as  to  the  admissibility  of  a  revelation,  they  were  toto 
coelo  discordant.  I  humbly  think  that  this  is  not  sufficiently 
realized  in  our  day,  either  by  Christians  or  by  those  who  stand 
on  the  other  side ;  and  while  I  am  far  from  wishing  to  deny 
unbelievers  the  advantage  of  any  coincidence  they  may  have 
with  earlier  witnesses  to  the  negative  side  of  their  creed,  I  shall 
endeavor  to  show  here  how  limited,  in  the  deepest  sense,  must 
be  any  concord  that  they  can  establish  with  the  polytheistic 
unbelievers  of  the  first  centuries.  Hence  I  shall  endeavor,  in 
regard  to  the  latter,  by  testimonies  of  Christian  writers  or  quo- 
tations from  their  own  works,  to  show  how  genuinely  polythe- 
istic these  unbelievers  were;  and,  also,  as  a  special  point,  how 
fully  they  conceded  the  admissibility  of  all  Christian  arguments 
for  the  supernatural,  though,  of  course,  they  denied  that  these 
were  cogent  for  Christianity  in  such  a  sense  as  to  exclude  pa- 
ganism. It  will  be,  however,  remembered  that  this  proof  does 
not  hold  absolutely  good  of  all  antagonists  of  Christianity  what- 
ever. There  was  a  section  of  the  philosophers,  always  growing 
less  and  less  influential,  after  the  dawn  of  Christianity — the 
Epicureans  and  the  Sceptics — who  escaped  polytheism  by  es- 
caping all  serious  religion.  But  neither  in  numbers  nor  influ- 
ence did  they  rank  among  the  more  considerable  opponents  of 
the  gospel  in  its  progress  to  victory ;  and  hence  they  may,  for 
present  purposes,  be  disregarded — Lucian  being  the  only  one 
who  might  fall  under  this  exception,  while  Celstis,  though 
ranked  by  some  as  an  Epicurean,  has  in  him  such  Platonic  af- 
finities as  to  class  him  rather  with  Porphyry  and  Julian  among 
the  zealous  upholders  of  paganism. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  charge  the  philosophic  antagonists  of 
Christianity  with  defending  the  vulgar  polytheism  exactly  as  it 
stood,  with  all  its  abominations  and  atrocities.  They  so  far 
tried  to  make  an  approximation  to  the  Christian  apologists, 
who  for  nearly  three  centuries,  from  Justin  Martyr  to  Augus- 
tine, assailed  the  popular  system  with  such  force  alike  of  rea- 
soning and  of  eloquence.  We  see  where  the  more  refined  ad- 
herents of  the  pagan  system  took  their  ground,  since  almost 
every  apologist,  after  having  exposed  the  absurdities  and  horrors 
of  the  vulgar  belief  and  practice,  goes  on  to  deal  with  the  im- 
proved and  extenuated  forms  of  the  same  superstition,  as  phi- 
losophy alone  would  be  responsible  for  it.  These  abatements, 
however,  do  not  restore  any  harmony  between  the  philosophical 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST   FOUR  CENTURIES.        19 

unbelievers  of  the  first  centuries  and  those  of  the  eighteenth,  as 
we  see  that  with  every  modification  the  polytheistic  principle 
is  still  retained ;  that  the  attempts  at  improvement  lead  to  other 
collisions  with  the  views  of  later  unbelief ;  and  that  in  point  of 
fact  this  later  scheme  has  formally  dissented  from  and  thrown 
over  the  earlier  combatant  against  Christianity.  It  is  now 
time  to  make  these  allegations  good. 

First,  The  radical  polytheism  of  the  principal  early  assailants 
of  the  gospel  cannot  be  denied.  Thus,  for  example,  Celsus 
lays  down  the  characteristic  principle  of  the  existence  of  local 
gods,  whom  it  was  right  for  those  parts  of  the  world  that  had 
been  assigned  to  them  to  worship.  "  Rightly,"  he  says,  "  would 
things  thus  managed  be  done  according  to  individual  pleasure, 
and  it  would  not  be  consistent  with  sanctity  to  break  the  usages 
thus  fixed  from  the  beginning  by  local  settlement."*  Thus 
Origen  understands  him,  and  argues  that  this  justifies  the  sac- 
rifice of  strangers  at  the  shrine  of  Diana  in  Tauris,  and  the  Mo- 
loch-worship of  Africa;  and  comes  back  in  religion,  as  Celsus 
indeed  admitted,  to  the  maxim  of  Pindar,  that  custom  was  the 
queen  of  the  world.  It  is  upon  the  original  appointment  of 
the  one  Supreme  God,  no  doubt,  that  Celsus  founds  the  wor- 
ship of  inferior  divinities  or  daemons,  arguing,  to  use  his  own 
words,  that  "  the  worshipper  of  more  gods  than  one,  in  wor- 
shipping some  one  of  those  that  belong  to  the  Supreme,  does 
in  this  what  is  pleasing  to  him ;"  it  being  understood  "  that  it 
is  not  lawful  to  worship  any  one  to  whom  he  does  not  give 
the  honor."  f  But  Origen  justly  asks  where  this  warrant  is  to 
be  found ;  and  Celsus,  in  applying  his  own  rule,  sinks  to  the 
lowest  level  of  vulgar  superstition,  giving  as  an  example  of  this 
distribution  the  assignment  in  Egypt  of  the  care  of  six-and- 
thirty  or  more  separate  parts  of  the  body  to  as  many  gods, 
whose  names,  as  Celsus,  without  any  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  ^ 
has  reproduced  them  in  their  Egyptian  form,  are,  "  Chnoumen,  ^ 
and  Chnachoumen,  and  Knat,  and  Sikat,  and  Biou,  and  Erou,"  / 
etc.,  by  the  pronouncing  of  which  the  disorders  of  the  several 
bodily  members  were  healed.  J 

Similar  evidence  could  be  produced  from  the  works  of  Por-     / 
phyry,  as  preserved  in  fragments  in  Eusebius's  "  Gospel  Prepa-^^/  . 
ration,"  and  also   in  his   own  extant  treatise   on  "Abstinence 
from  Animals,"  in  which,  though  there  is  a  most  laudable  effort 

*  "  OrSg.  Cels.,"  v.  25.  f  Ibid.,  viii.  2.  J  Ibid.,  viii.  58. 


20         UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

to  separate  the  rite  of  sacrifice  from  blood  and  cruelty,  there  is 
still  an  acceptance  of  a  polytheist  basis  for  his  own  scheme  of 
faith.  The  closing  sentence  of  his  work  on  Abstinence  suffi- 
ciently proves  this,  in  which  he  speaks  with  sympathy  of  the 
old  law  of  Attica  "  to  honor  the  gods  and  national  heroes  by 
common  worship,  following  the  ancestral  statutes,  as  each  was 
able,  with  praise  and  gifts  of  fruit,  and  yearly  meat-offerings ;" 
nor  is  it  easy  to  describe  how  far  in  the  same  work,  as  in  his 
admiring  account  of  the  fasts  and  observances  of  the  Egyptian 
priests,  he  descends  to  the  grossest  depths  of  ritualism,  and  to 
an  acceptance  of  the  whole  Egyptian  theosophy,  founding 
beast-worship  on  the  universal  presence  of  God.* 

As  to  Julian,  it  would  be  easy  to  prove  the  same  points  from 
his  writings,  but  it  is  enough  to  appeal  to  his  public  utterances 
and  acts.  According  to  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  in  almost  the  last 
sentence  of  this  father's  long  reply  to  him,  he  ascribed  his  ele- 
vation to  the  purple  to  omens,  such  as  the  voices  of  magpies 
and  sparrows.  Julian  also  lived  in  a  perpetual  round  of  sacri- 
ficial worship,  his  favorite  god  being  Apollo,  or  the  Sun.  He 
tempted  his  Christian  soldiers,  as  Gregory  Nazianzen  declares  in 
his  first  Oration,  by  military  and  pagan  emblems  skilfully  blend- 
ed, to  adore  the  latter  while  reverencing  the  former,  and  made 
their  donatives  conditional  on  their  casting  a  grain  or  two  of 
incense  on  the  altar  which  they  had  to  pass,  lie  purified  the 
Grove  of  Daphne  because  polluted  by  the  bones  of  the  Chris- 
tian martyr  Babylas.  And  so  expensive  were  his  animal-offer- 
ings at  all  times  that  the  jest  respecting  Marcus  Aurelius,  as  to 
V  the  cattle  praying  him  not  to  extinguish  their  'breed,  was  re- 
vived; and  such  an  extirpation  was  actually  dreaded,  should  he 
have  returned  victorious  from  the  Persian  war. 

It  is  to  be  observed,  secondly,  that  these  grossly  pagan  feat- 
•  ures  were  not  brought  round  into  greater  harmony  with  recent 
unbelief  by  the  changes  then  entailed  on  paganism  in  conflict 
with  Christianity.  An  attempt  had  to  be  made  to  spiritualize 
and  allegorize  paganism,  which  began  so  early  that  almost 
the  first  Christian  apologists  notice  it,  but  which  reached  its 
consummation  in  the  Neo-Platonic  school  of  the  third  century. 
Eusebius,  in  reply  to  the  lost  work  of  Porphyry  on  "  Images," 
has,  in  the  third  book  of  his  "  Gospel  Preparation,"  met  the 
effort  of  this  philosopher  to  find  everywhere  some  ground,  in 

*  Porph.,  "  De  Abstinentia,"  iv.  6-8. 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES.        21 

nature  and  in  the  operation  of  an  all-pervading  principle,  for 
the  most  eccentric  as  well  as  repulsive  literalities  of  paganism, 
as  in  the  rape  of  Proserpine  the  hiding  of  the  seed  in  winter ; 
in  the  labors  of  Hercules  the  passage  of  the  sun  through  the 
signs  of  the  zodiac ;  and  even  in  the  limp  of  Vulcan  and  the 
staff  of  Esculapius,  some  edifying  mystery.  Eusebius  justly 
asks  why  these  allegories  should  descend  to  the  impure  and  re- 
volting, as  a  proper  emblem  of  the  divine  nature  ;  why  so  many 
names  and  fables  should  all  denote  the  same  thing,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, Apollo,  Hercules,  Bacchus,  ^Esculapius,  the  healing  pow- 
ers of  the  sun ;  and  why  in  any  case  the  unity  of  God  should 
be  so  lacerated  ?  Not  the  least  argument  against  this  school  is 
the  example  of  Plato  himself,  who,  if  he  could  thus  have  spir- 
itualized Homer  and  Hesiod,  would  not  have  excluded  them 
from  the  "  Republic."  Nor  did  this  school  rationalize  more 
worthily  by  turning  to  practical  account,  in  order  to  meet  the 
Christian  claim  of  direct  communion  with  God,  the  pagan  doc- 
trine of  possible  divine  visions  and  ecstasies,  with  all  the  appli- 
ances of  theurgy  and  magic.  There  was  here  a  true  confession 
of  want,  but  it  could  not  possibly  have  commended  Neo-Pla- 
tonism  to  the  cold  intellectualism  of  the  eighteenth  century ; 
and  nothing  could  be  less  welcome  to  it  in  former  antagonists 
of  Christianity  than  the  statement  of  Porphyry,  in  his  "  Life  of 
Plotinus,"  that  during  his  six  years'  intercourse  with  that  head 
of  the  school  in  Rome,  the  master  passed  four  times  into  the 
state  of  direct  intuition  of,  and  union  with,  the  universal  soul 
by  an  energy  altogether  mysterious.*  Nor  could  their  approx- 
imation to  Christianity  on  the  more  speculative  side  have  abated 
the  prejudice  of  later  ages.  They  developed  the  fainter  out- 
line of  something  like  a  Trinity  found  in  Plato  into  a  full  sys- 
tem ;  in  which  the  original  good,  or  TO  'AyaQov ;  the  Nove,  or 
mind ;  and  the  ^vxfi,  or  soul,  represented  the  corresponding 
Christian  persons.  But  this,  which  did  not  recommend  them 
to  the  Christians,  as  Cyril  of  Alexandria  f  reminds  Julian  that 
their  Trinity  did  not  rise  above  Arianism,  could  not  gain  for 
them  any  sympathy  with  later  unbelief,  especially  in  a  form  so 
sternly  hostile  to  all  mysticism  as  that  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. 

I  now  add,  thirdly,  that  we  have  actual  protests  of  more  re- 
cent unbelief  against  its  former  ally  and  precursor.     Gibbon 

*  "Vita  Plotini,"23.  f  Cyril,  "Adv.  Jul.,"p.  270. 


22         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

has  not  mentioned  Celsus,  and  said  but  little  of  Porphyry ;  but 
his  picture  of  Julian  contains  not  a  few  sarcastic  strokes,  such 
as  that  his  "  sleeping  or  waking  visions,  the  ordinary  effects  of 
abstinence  or  fanaticism,  would  almost  degrade  the  emperor  to 
the  level  of  an  Egyptian  monk."  *  He  says  of  this  philosoph- 
ical school  generally  that  "  it  may  appear  a  subject  of  surprise 
and  scandal  that  the  philosophers  themselves  should  have  con- 
tributed to  abuse  the  superstitious  credulity  of  mankind."  f 
And,  again,  "  The  ancient  sages  had  derided  the  popular  super- 
stition ;  after  disguising  its  extravagance  by  the  thin  pretence 
of  allegory,  the  disciples  of  Plotinus  and  Porphyry  became  its 
most  zealous  defenders.  .  .  .  The  Neo-Platonists  would  scarcely 
deserve  a  place  in  the  history  of  science ;  but  in  that  of  the 
Church  the  mention  of  them  will  very  frequently  occur."  J  I 
am  not  aware  that  Hume  has  passed  any  judgment  like  this  of 
Gibbon  upon  these  writers,  but  his  complaint  in  regard  to  Plu- 
tarch, an  earlier  type  of  the  same  school,  indicates  a  similar  re- 
coil. "  I  must  confess  that  the  discourse  of  Plutarch  concern- 
ing the  silence  of  the  oracles  is  in  general  of  so  odd  a  texture, 
and  so  unlike  his  other  productions,  that  one  is  at  a  loss  what 
judgment  to  form  of  it.  .  .  .  The  personages  he  introduces  ad- 
vance very  wild,  absurd,  and  contradictory  opinions,  more  like 
the  visionary  systems  or  ravings  of  Plato  than  the  plain  sense 
of  Plutarch.  There  runs  also  through  the  whole  an  air  of  su- 
perstition and  credulity,  which  resembles  very  little  the  spirit 
that  appears  in  other  philosophical  compositions  of  that  au- 
thor." §  Voltaire,  in  his  "  Dictionary,"  comes  to  speak  of 
Julian  ;  and  he  too  is  perplexed  by  the  question  how  "  a  man  of 
affairs  like  him,  of  such  genius,  a  true  philosopher,  could  forsake 
the  Christianity  in  which  he  had  been  educated,  for  paganism 
of  which  he  might  have  been  expected  to  feel  the  ridiculousness 
and  the  absurdity  "  (article  "  Julien  ").  Voltaire,  however,  sup- 
poses that  Julian  was  influenced  in  his  pagan  observances  more 
by  accommodation  to  his  party  than  by  conviction.  "The! 
Sultan  of  the  Turks,"  he  says,  "  must  bless  Omar ;  the  Shah  of 
Persia  must  bless  AH ;  Marcus  Aurelius  himself  was  initiated 
in  the  Eleusinian  mysteries."  But  here,  as  so  often  elsewhere, 
Voltaire  is  less  instructed  than  Gibbon  in  facts ;  and  the  fanat- 
ical zeal  of  Julian  cannot  be  disputed.  Hence  Strauss  gives  up 

*  Vol.  ii.,  p.  516.  t  Vol.  ii.,  p.  514.  J  Vol.  i.,  pp.  468,  469. 

§  Hume,  "Essays,"  vol.  i.,  note  SS. 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES.         23 

Julian  as  a  prototype  of  unbelief,  and  through  his  sides  makes  a    -^ 
satirical  attack  on  the  Christian  superstition  of  the  late  King  of 
Prussia.* 

It  is  hardly  necessary,  by  any  separate  evidence  now,  to  show 
further  that  the  opponents  of  Christianity  in  the  early  ages, 
unlike  those  that  followed,  admitted  the  principle  of  a  divine 
revelation.  We  do  not  say,  indeed,  that  they  admitted  it  in  the 
strictly  defined  sense  of  the  Christian  apologists,  as  a  remedy 
by  immediate  divine  communication  for  a  moral  and  spiritual 
fall ;  as  the  doctrine  of  a  fall  and  of  a  divine  remedy  lay  in 
such  shade  and  obscurity  in  paganism.  Nor  do  we  say  that 
they  marked  off  a  strictly  miraculous  period,  like  the  beginning 
of  Christianity,  or  even  of  Judaism,  for  these  pagan  writers 
supposed  revelation  continuous,  and  hence  their  supernatural 
appearances  and  oracles  resembled  the  theology  of  Rome  more 
than  of  Protestantism.  Still  the  entire  spirit  of  the  early 
period,  as  we  have  seen,  was  out  of  harmony  with  the  jealousy 
and  distrust  of  the  supernatural  which  came  at  length  to  pre- 
vail in  the  schools  of  unbelief  properly  so  called;  and  no  one 
then  doubted  that  a  revelation  could  be  introduced  and  proved. 
To  make  this  good,  it  will  simply  be  enough  to  show  that  pa- 
ganism was  looked  upon  as  itself  a  revelation,  and  also  that 
Christianity  was  admitted  to  have  some  supernatural  evidence. 

That  paganism  was  looked  on  as  a  revelation  is  attested  by 
Porphyry  in  his  work  on  the  "  Philosophy  of  Oracles."f  This 
has  been  denied  to  be  his,  but -it  is  accepted  by  Neander  and 
the  great  weight  of  authority.  It  consists  of  responses  by  the 
gods  as  to  the  right  mode  of  their  worship ;  and  Porphyry 
speaks  of  the  collection  as  meeting  the  want  of  repose  in  minds 
that  struggled  after  the  truth,  as  with  a  birth-pang. J  The  whole 
of  worship  is  rested  on  divine  manifestation,  as  is  thus  asserted : 
"  As  to  things  to  be  sacrificed,  and  days  to  be  avoided,  and  the 
nature  of  images,  and  the  forms  in  which  the  gods  appear  and 
the  places  which  they  haunt,  this  and  everything  else  relating 
to  their  worship  men  have  learned  from  themselves."§  The 

*  The  work  of  Strauss  in  which  this  is  done  bears  the  title  of  "  Der  Ro- 
mantiker  auf  clem  Throne  der  Casaren,"  published  in  1847,  in  which  a 
parallel  is  drawn  between  Julian  and  Frederick  William  IV. 

t  The  title  of  this  work,  as  we  learn  from  Eusebius  ("Pnepar.  Evang.," 
iv.  6),  was  nepi  r/Jf  tic  AoyiW  QiXoaotyiat;. 

%  TTJV  aXrjOtiav  uSivavrtQ.     Euseb.,  "Prsep.,"  iv.  7. 

§    Ibid.,  v.  11. 


24         UNBELIEF   IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

want  of  books  authentic  and  sacredly  guarded  comes  strik- 
ingly to  light  in  all  such  claims  to  found  the  classical  pa- 
ganism upon  revelation;  but  the  principle  is  distinctly  con- 
ceded. 

Hence  even  Christ  might  be  allowed  to  be,  in  a  certain  sense, 
above  the  ordinary  laws  of  nature,  though  the  evidence  of  a 
universal  and  commanding  .  mission  were  rejected.  CVlsus 
grants  him  magical  powers,  which  he  learned  in  Egypt,*  and 
he  matches  him,  elsewhere,  with  some  of  the  prodigies  and  de- 
tached wonders  of  Grecian  legendary  history.  The  very  effort 
in  the  next  century,  of  Hierocles,  President  of  Bithynia  at  the 
time  of  the  persecution  of  Diocletian,  to  exalt  Apollonius  of 
Tyana  above  Christ  as  a  wonder-worker  contained  a  recogni- 
tion of  mysterious  powers,  though  the  Christian  writers  Lac- 
tantius  and  Eusebius,  who  replied  to  him,  vindicated  for  the 
Saviour  not  only  a  higher  dominion,  but  a  pure  moral  purpose 
and  an  effectual  redemption.  The  contrast  between  the  two 
ages  of  unbelief  appears  in  this,  that  when,  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  parallel  between  Christ  and  Apollonius  reappeared 
in  English  Deism,  all  that  was  to  the  disadvantage  of  Christ 
was  retained,  but  the  whole  underlying  conception  of  real  spir- 
itual powers,  common  to  Christianity  and  to  paganism,  was 
struck  away  and  discredited.! 

III.  Our  third  main  point  of  distinction  still  remains,  viz., 
the  general  acceptance  of  the  Christian  books  by  the  hostile 
writers  of  the  first  centuries,  as  compared  with  the  wide  and 
resolute  scepticism  of  more  recent  times.  It  cannot  be  said 
that  there  is  no  questioning,  by  unbelievers,  of  the  genuineness 
and  integrity  of  any  book  of  the  Old  or  New  Testament,  be- 
fore the  fall  of  paganism ;  but  there  is  certainly  a  measure  of 
acquiescence,  which,  considering  the  doubts  in  some  cases  of 
the  orthodox  and  of  the  heretics,  is  a  marked  contrast  to  the 
adverse  criticism  begun  as  early  as  the  seventeenth  century  and 
continued  to  our  own  days.  With  what  general  truth,  and  yet 
needful  limitation,  this  holds  good,  I  shall  endeavor  to  show  in 
regard  to  the  three  leading  representatives  of  early  unbelief — 
Celsus,  Porphyry,  and  Julian. 

*  "Orig.  Cels.,"i.  28. 

t  Blount's  vrork  on  Apollonius  appeared  a  little  earlier  than  the  eigh- 
teenth century/'  viz.  in  1680. 


UNBELIEF   OF   THE   FIRST   FOUR   CENTURIES. 

In  Celsus  we  have  the  fullest  reference  to,  and  quotation  of,  7 
Scripture;  and  as  his  date  falls  so  much  earlier  than  that  of 
the  others,  probably  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  second  century, 
as  early  as  Irenaeus  or  Clement  of  Alexandria  or  Tertullian,  his 
recognition  of  Scripture  books,  or  even  of  facts,  is  confessedly 
of  great  importance.  He,  no  doubt,  falls  into  a  number  of  mis- 
takes ;  but  it  is  not  so  much  as  to  the  authority  of  Scripture 
among  the  Christians,  or  as  to  its  letter,  as  in  regard  to  its 
meaning,  and  its  evidence  for  or  against  the  Christian  cause. 
The  most  adverse  thing  which  he  says  as  to  the  position  of 
the  Gospels  (not  one  author  of  which  he  names)  is  that  some 
of  the  believers,  "  as  coming  to  themselves  out  of  a  debauch, 
transform  the  gospel  from  its  first  shape  into  three  or  four,  or  ^ 
more,  different  ones,  and  alter  it,  that  they  may  have  evasions  «; 
at  every  point."  *  Origen  supposes  here  such  a  falsification  to  v 
be  charged  as  was  only  committed  by  Marcion  and  other  de- 
pravers of  the  Gospels,  and  as  did  not  affect  the  general  Chris- 
tian name.  But  even  if  we  suppose,  with  Westcott,  that  Celsus, 
in  his  rude  way,  was  giving  a  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  Gos- 
pels as  due  to  an  apologetic  purpose,  and  thus  accounting  for 
the  variations  and  apparent  contradictions  (on  which  he  else- 
where lays  hold)  as  due  to  deviation  from  a  supposed  common 
original,  this  will  not  affect  Celsus's  concession  to  the  Gospels 
as  accepted  Christian  documents,  or  the  use  he  makes  of  them, 
as  deriving  from  them  the  received  Christian  history.  Hence, 
in  reference  to  them,  he  says  at  one  point  of  the  argument : 
"These  things  are  from  your  own  writings,  as  to  which  we 
need  no  other  evidence,  for  you  fall  by  your  own  authorities.''! 
Celsus  shows  by  his  citations  that  he  knows  all  the  four  Gos- 
pel s— Matthew  and  Luke  by  the  genealogies,!  Mark  by  the 
reference  to  the  carpenter,§  and  John  by  the  blood  and  water 
from  the  Saviour's  side.|  The  marking  incidents  of  the  Gos- 
pel history  are  also  reproduced — the  star  and  the  flight  into 
Egypt;  the  connection  with  Nazareth;  the  baptism,  the  dove, 
the  voice;  the  itinerant  life  with  publicans  and  mariners;  the 
record  of  miracles,  healing,  resurrection,  feeding  of  multitudes ; 
the  foretelling  of  one  disciple's  betrayal  and  of  another's  denial, 
and  of  His  own  death  and  resurrection  ;  the  struggle  in  the 
garden,  with  the  cup  and  the  prayer;  the  purple  robe,  the 

*  "Orig.  Cels.,"  i.  27.  f  Ibid.,  ii.  7^.  }  Ibid.,  ii.  32. 

§  Ibid.,  vi.  30.  j|  Ibid.,  ii.  3G. 

2 


2(5          rNBKLlKF  IN   THE    EIGHTEENTH   CKNTUKV. 

crown  of  thorns,  the  reed ;  the  vinegar  and  gall ;  the  expiring 
voice,  the  earthquake,  the  darkness.*  These  incidents  can  only 
belong  to  the  existing  Gospels  ;  nor  is  anything  stated  that  re- 
quires us  to  bring  in  any  apocryphal  source.  So,  also,  the  evi- 
dence of  the  identity  of  the  sources  of  Celsus  with  our  Gos- 
pels is  greatly  strengthened  by  the  allusions  to  the  record  of 
the  resurrection.  Jesus  is  reproached  for  needing  to  have  the 
stone  rolled  away  by  an  angel. \  The  difficulty  as  to  one  angel 
or  two  is  noticed. J  Prominence  is  given  to  Mary  Magdelene, 
with  allusion  to  her  earlier  mental  trouble  (yvrt)  Trapotarpoc,§  a 
strange  anticipation  of  Kenan's  femme  hallucinee).  Mention 
is  made  of  Jesus  showing  the  marks  of  his  punishment,  and  es- 
pecially his  hands,  as  they  had  been  pierced. ||  Nor  does  the 
objection  fail  that  Jesus  concealed  himself  from  his  enemies 
after  his  resurrection. •[  This  is  but  a  portion  of  the  evidence 
drawn  from  Celsus's  own  words,  that,  however  he  derided  and 
sought  to  confute  the  Gospel  narratives  (and  the  same  remark 
applies  to  other  portions  of  Scripture),  he  did  not  question  their 
position  as  the  genuine  and  accepted  documents  of  the  Chris- 
tians, but  rather  used  them  in  that  character  to  assail  Christian- 
ity. His  testimony  here  is  evidently  of  the  greatest  weight; 
and  his  position  as  at  once  an  immediately  succeeding  writer 
and  an  enemy  gives  the  Gospels  a  recognition  which  could 
have  come  from  no  other  quarter,  even  from  later  unbelief  in 
the  early  centuries.  It  is  impossible  for  modern  unbelief  to 
shake  this  foundation,  or  to  resolve  those  materials  which  Cel- 
sus has  attested  as  so  solid  and  documentary,  into  the  mist  and 
vapor  of  shifting  tradition.  What  he  assails  is  not  a  cloud, 
but  a  fortress  well  defined,  and  the  mark  of  studied  attack  and 
siege.  It  is  too  late  now  to  obliterate  his  lines  and  parallels, 
which  have  even  been  added  to  the  intrenchments  against  which 
they  were  directed. 

With  regard  to  Porphyry,  as  he  falls  a  century  later,  and  as 
his  principal  wrork  against  the  Christians,  filled  with  references 
to  Scripture,  has  perished,  except  in  fragments,  he  does  not 
supply  the  same  valuable  matter  as  Celsus.  It  may  seem,  in- 
deed, that  one  celebrated  reference  in  that  work  is  adverse,  viz., 


*  It  is  not  judged  necessary  in  a  work  like  this  to  cite  the  evidence 
for  all  these  statements  from  the  treatise  of  Origen. 

t  "Orig.  Cels.,"  v.  58.  |  Ibid.,  v.  56.  §  Ibid.,  ii.  59. 

||  Ibid.,  ii.  50.  1  Ibid.,  ii.  03. 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE   FIRbT   FOUR  CENTURIES.        27 

his  denial  of  the  genuineness  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  and  his 
interpretation  of  it  as  a  prophecy  written  after  the  event.  This, 
however,  though  an  exception  to  the  general  habit  of  these 
writers  in  dealing  with  the  Scripture  canon,  does  not  mean  so 
much  as  may  be  at  first  supposed.  It  was  evidently  the  ques- 
tion of  interpretation  that  led  Porphyry  astray.  Had  he  been 
able  to  make  light  of  the  contents,  and  yet  admit  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  book,  as  Celsus  so  constantly  did  in  regard  to  the 
Gospels,  he  would  not  have  rejected  a  work  for  which  the  ex- 
ternal evidence  is  so  strong.  Besides,  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  this  denial  stands  alone;  forthe  Christian  writers — Eusebius, 
Jerome,  and  others — who  have  written  against  Porphyry  have 
noticed  no  other  book,  or  part  of  a  book,  that  he  rejected.  And, 
once  more,  the  authority  of  Porphyry  is  of  no  weight  whatever 
against  a  book  so  long  before  his  own  age,  as  in  comparison  it 
is  in  favor  of  books  belonging  to  his  own  time  or  somewhat 
earlier,  like  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament.  Here,  though 
less  valuable  than  that  of  Celsus,  his  testimony  is  of  conse- 
quence. We  find  him  by  noticing  a  difficulty  in  the  genealo- 
gy in  Matthew,*  viz.,  the  repetition  of  the  name  of  Jechonias 
in  each  of  two  sets  of  fourteen  generations,  thus  attesting  its 
place  and  that  of  the  genealogy  in  the  Gospel  of  Matthew.  So 
with  the  call  of  Matthew, f  in  the  ninth  chapter  of  the  same  \/ 
Gospel,  which  is  objected  to  as  making  the  assent  of  the  dis-  \ 
ciple  too  easy.  And  so  with  other  points  of  criticism,  like  the 
argument  against  Jesus  being  the  Word,  as  alleged  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  fourth  Gospel,  that  he  could  neither  be  the  in- 
ward Word  nor  the  outward,  and  therefore  could  not  be  the 
Word  in  any  sense.J  These  exceptions  stand  upon  an  entirely 
different  footing  from  the  objection  to  the  authorship  of  Dan- 
iel. They  admit  the  date  and  reception  of  the  New  Testament 
books,  and  only,  as  was  in  place  for  an  unbeliever,  deny  their 
teaching ;  or  they  at  times  admit  it,  as  when  the  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  seemed,  in  the  case  of  Paul  and  Peter,  to  record  some- 
thing discreditable  to  the  Christian  cause.  § 

*  Hieron.  on  Dan.  i.  1.  -j-  Hieron.  on  Matt.  ix.  9. 

t  Theophylact  on  John  i.  2.     Op.  p.  507. 

§  Porphyry,  as  we  learn  from  Jerome's  letter  to  Augustine  (Aug., 
Op.,  ii.  121),  Benedictine  edition),  wanted  to  make  out  that  Paul  re- 
proved Peter  for  such  conformity  to  the  Gentiles  as  he  himself  had  prac- 
tised. "Pauli  arguit  procacitatem  quod  principem  apostolorum  Petrum 
ausus  est  reprehendere,  et  arguere  in  faciem  et  ratione  constringere,  quod 


28         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

The  references  by  Julian  to  Scripture  are  chiefly  of  interest 
as  affecting  himself,  for  the  question  of  the  canon  is  by  that 
time  decided.  More  of  his  references  almost  are  to  the  Old 
Testament  than  to  the  New.  He  readily  quotes  it  and  relies 
on  it,  though  he  throws  out  a  rash  assertion,  which  from  him 
has  no  authority,  that  Moses  had  been  confused  and  interpo- 
lated by  Ezra  "  in  a  capricious  manner."  *  He  makes  no  similar 
charge  of  corruption  as  applied  to  any  part  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, but  maintains  that  the  writers  disagree.  Thus,  in  per- 
haps the  most  interesting  part  of  his  work  against  the  Chris- 
tians, "You  are  so  unhappy  as  not  to  adhere  to  the  things 
delivered  to  you  by  the  apostles;  but  they  have  been  altered 
by  you  for  the  worse,  and  carried  on  to  yet  greater  impiety ; 
for  neither  Paul  nor  Matthew  nor  Luke  nor  Mark  has  dared 
to  call  Jesus  God.  But  honest  John,  understanding  that  a 
great  multitude  of  men  in  the  cities  of  Greece  and  Italy  were 
seized  with  this  distemper,  and  hearing  likewise,  I  suppose,  that 
the  tombs  of  Peter  and  Paul  were  with  reverence  frequented, 
though  as  yet  privately  only,  however,  having  heard  of  it,  he 
then  first  presumed  to  give  him  that  title."  f  Without  giving 
Cyril's  refutation  of  the  alleged  absence  of  the  name  of  God 
from  the  earlier  Gospels  that  speak  of  Jesus,  I  shall  rather  add 
the  vigorous  remarks  of  Dr.  Lardner,  which  strike  into  the 
heart  of  the  still  living  controversy  regarding  the  fourth  Gos- 
pel :  "  Julian  here  acknowledged  many  things  extremely  prej- 
udicial to  his  cause,  and  more  so  than  he  was  aware  of.  For 
he  here  acknowledgeth  the  genuineness  and  authority  of  most 
of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament,  the  writings  of  Paul,  the 
Gospels  of  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John ;  and  that  these 
books  contain  the  doctrine  of  Christ's  apostles,  the  persons  who 
accompanied  him,  and  were  the  witnesses  of  his  preaching, 
works,  death,  resurrection,  and  taught  in  his  name  afterwards. 
He  acknowledgeth  the  early  and-  wonderful  progress  of  the 
Gospel,  for  he  supposeth  that  there  were  in  many  cities  of 
Greece  and  Italy  multitudes  of  believers  in  Jesus  before  John 
wrote  his  Gospel,  which,  as  he  computes,  was  published  soon 

male  fecerit,  id  est  in  eo  errore  fuerit,  in  quo  fuit  ipse,  qui  alium  avguit 
delinquentem." 

*  dirb  yi/w/ifj£  t£t«£,  Cyril,  "Adv.  Jul.,"  p.  168. 

t  The  edition  of  Cyril's  reply  to  Julian,  to  which  this  reference  (p. 
327),  with  others,  is  made,  is  that  of  Spanheim,  printed  along  with  Julian's 
works. 


UNBELIEF  OF  THE  FIRST  FOUR  CENTURIES.        29 

after  the  death  of  Peter  and  Paul."*  In  addition  to  other 
facts  of  the  Gospel  record,  Julian  alludes  to  our  Lord's  virgin 
birth,f  his  enrolment  under  Cyrenius,  and  the  unbelief  of  his 
relatives  ;J  and  he  twice  alludes  to  his  miracles,  saying  that 
he  "rebuked  the  winds  and  walked  on  the  seas,"§  and  that 
"  he  healed  lame  and  blind  people,  and  exorcised  demoniacs  in 
the  villages  of  Bethsaida  and  Bethany."  ||  A  peculiar  feature 
in  Julian  are  his  allusions  to  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles — the  con- 
version of  maid-servants  and  slaves,  of  Cornelius,^]"  with  the  vis- 
ion of  Peter  on  the  house-top,**  and  of  Sergius  Paulus,ff  the 
epistle  of  the  Jerusalem  Council  to  the  Gentiles, £f  and  the  re- 
proving of  Peter  at  Antioch.§§  The  citations  of  Julian  are 
thus  only  second  to  those  of  Celsus,  and,  like  them,  they  supply 
no  weapons  of  controversy  to  unbelievers,  but  only  strengthen 
the  Christian  argument.  ( 

It  would  be  wrong,  however,  to  leave  the  impression  that  \£ 
while,  in  the  three  particulars  referred  to,  the  unbelief  of  the 
first  centuries  deviates  from  that  of  later  days,  there  are  not 
many  points  of  contact  between  them.  This  would  be  to 
break  the  continuity  of  history,  which  in  different  forms  re- 
peats itself ;  and  it  would  be  to  forget  the  eternal  sameness  of 
those  deep  principles  in  human  nature  which  make  all  oppo- 
nents of  Christianity  radically  one.  The  difficulties  and  ob- 
jections of  later  centuries  are  largely  anticipated  in  the  begin- 
ning, and  with  a  bluntness,  a  rudeness,  a  bitterness,  that  were 
not  afterwards  exceeded.  The  spirit  of  Christianity  was  too 
unworldly,  and  its  claims  were  too  high  to  be  endured.  What 
had  this  dead  f4->d  done  to  merit  homage,  rising  among  a  peo-  t/ 
pie  who  had  always  been  slaves,  bringing  his  salvation  so  late  V 
and  to  a  corner  of  the  world?  Were  the  great  literature,  the 
unconquered  power,  the  ancient  laws,  of  the  foremost  nations 
of  the  earth  to  go  down  before  a  challenge  like  this?  It  is 
the  very  spirit  of  Bolingbroke,  of  Gibbon,  and  of  Voltaire — 
ashamed,  indeed,  of  idolatry,  but  up  in  arms  against  the  humili- 
ty and  faith  of  Christ's  kingdom.  We  can  thus  measure  what 
Christianity  had  to  conquer,  not  only  then,  but  still ;  not  Celsus 
only,  or  Porphyry,  but  Julian,  the  pagan  heart  beneath  the  once 
Christian  exterior — the  Christian  culture  that  has  miscarried, 


*  Works,  vol.  iv.,  p.  336.  f  Cyril,  p.  262.  J  Ibid.,  p.  213. 

§  Ibid.,  p.  213.     ||  Ibid.,  p.  191.     f  Ibid.,  p.  206.     **  Ibid.,  p.  314. 
ft  Ibid.,  p.  206.  '  \\  Ibid.,  p.  324.  §§  Ibid.,  p.  325. 


30         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

and  ended  for  nations  and  individuals  in  a  more  sad,  pro- 
nounced, and  even  fanatical  unbelief.  To  this  conflict  may  the 
Christianity  of  our  age  still  be  equal,  meeting  it  with  the  faith 
and-  patience,  the  love  and  prayer,  by  which  alone  in  any  age 
unbelief  is  overcome ! 


>       /    '  -' 

»*> 


UNBELIEF  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.       31 


LECTURE  II. 

UNBELIEF  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

Causes  of  Post-Reformation  Unbelief.— Divisions  of  the  Christian  Church. 
—Religious  Wars.— Falling-away  of  Culture  from  Christianity. — Sev- 
enteenth-century Apologists. — Grotius  and  Pascal. — Schools  of  Unbe- 
lief.— Reserve  in  All. — Deistic,  Lord  Herbert,  Hobbes ;  Pantheistic, 
Spinoza ;  Sceptical,  Bayle. 

WHEN  we  leave  the  unbelief  of  tlie  first  Christian  centuries, 
and  descend  to  that  of  the  period  after  the  Reformation,  we 
are  conscious. of  a  stupendous  change  in  the  aspect  of  Jhe  world. 
The  classical  paganism  is  extinct,  and  only  a  kind  of  traditional 
shot  has  been  fired  over  its  grave  by  the  mediaeval  theology, 
which  is  itself  ended.  A  more  terrible  and  disastrous  fight 
has  been  maintained  with  a  new  foe ;  and  against  it  the  Cru- 
sades, meeting  the  Saracen  and  Turkish  invasions  of  Moslem 
zeal,  have  been  the  chief,  if  not  the  only,  apologetics  of  many 
centuries;  losing  to  Christendom  the  whole  southern  shore  of 
the  Mediterranean,  and  leaving  the  Eastern  Church  and  Empire 
a  shadow  and  a  ruin.  In  the  Western  Church  the  better  ele- 
ments that  had  struggled  through  the  Middle  Ages,  increased 
at  length  by  the  revival  of  the  study  of  the  Scriptures,  as  well 
as  by  other  learning,  and  by  an  immense  new  baptism  of  the 
Spirit  of  God,  and  favored  by  political  necessities  and  tenden- 
cies that  could  no  longer  be  resisted,  have  organized  a  mighty 
Reformation,  able  to  withstand  every  attack,  and  resume  the 
long-interrupted  work  of  early  Christianity. 

It  was  natural  that  in  the  great  conflict  between  the  Refor- 
mation and  its  opponents,  which  swayed  to  and  fro  over  Europe 
for  more  than  a  century,  the  conflict  of  the  Church  of  Christ 
at  large  with  Unbelief  should  be  suspended,  and  for  a  time  well- 
riigli  forgotten.  Here  both  Rome  and  the  Reformation  were 
outwardly  agreed,  the  difference  being  as  to  the  interpreter  and 
the  meaning  of  Scripture,  and  not  as  to  its  authority.  There 
had,  no  doubt,  been  much  and  terrible  unbelief  in  the  heart  of 
the  Roman  communion  in  men  like  Pope  Leo  X.  and  Cardinal 


32         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

Bembo.  But  the  Reformation  brought  a  reaction  against  this, 
which,  besides,  had  never  been  formally  avowed  ;  and  the  strug- 
gles of  the  early  Jesuits,  whatever  deeper  unbelief  ultimately 
'  rose  out  of  them,  recovered  that  Church,  with  other  influences, 
in  a  measure  to  its  own  traditional  faith.  The  Reformers  were 
tooseriously  occupied  with  their  life-and-death  battle  against 
<  orrupted  Christianity  to  think  much  of  unbelief  in  the  ab- 
stract;  and  their  war  with  Rome,  that  took  the  place  of  the 
earlier  war  with  paganism,  did  not  afford  them  the  same  op- 
portunity to  bring  in  as  part  of  their  line  of  argument  the 
apologetic  view  of  Christianity.  A  still  nobler  reason  for  their 
comparative  silence  on  this  head  was  the  strength  of  their  own 
faith  and  that  of  their  adherents.  It  was  not  a  faith  nursed 
on  books  of  evidences,  but  on  communion  with  a  living  Christ, 
^  that  earned  the  Reformation  through  the  Diet  of  Worms,  the 
Siege  of  Leyden,  the  Marian  Persecution,  and  the  Wars  of  the 
League.  Hence  the  evidences  have  almost  no  place  in  the 
Protestant  Confessions  and  in  the  "  Institutes  "  of  Calvin.  This 
state  of  things,  however,  AVUS  not  destined  to  continue,  and  the 
difference  here  is  one  which  distinguishes  the  seventeenth  from 
the  sixteenth  century.  The  causes  of  these  changes,  and  of  a 
demand  for  a  special  apologetic  literature ;  the  nature  of  the 
literature  which  thus  sprang  up  in  the  seventeenth  century  ; 
and,  chiefly,  the  features  of  that  unbelief  which  gradually,  and 
in  spite  of  such  resistance,  shaped  itself  more  and  more  towards 
the  likeness  of  that  of  the  eighteen tli  century,  foreshadoAving, 
without  fully  reaching  it,  Avill  occupy  this  lecture. 

I.  We  haye^^rs^then,  to  touch  on  the  causes  of  the  decay 

/     of  faith  in  the  divine  origin  and  power  of  Christianity  which 

sprang  irp  in  the _centnry_  after  the  Reformation.      Of  these, 

some  were  indirectly  due  to  the  Reformation  itself,  and  some 

were  due  to  more  independent  influences. 

Among  the  causes  of  unbelief  indirectly  due  to  the  Reforma- 
tion a  large  place  is  to  be  assigned  to  the  element  of  division, 
both  ecclesiastical  and  civil,  which  it  necessarily  introduced  into 
thlThistory  of  Avhat  professed  to  be  the  one  Chnrch  of  Christ. 
The  risk  had  to  be  run,  but  the  evil  Avas  not  escaped.  There 
was  a  rent  made  permanent  in  the  system  of  European  Chris- 
tianity ;  and  the  same  Aveakness  which  had  sprung  from  the 
Arian  division  of  the  fourth  century,  and  without  the  same 
possibility  of  healing  the  breach,  Avas  reneAved.  This  might 


UNBELIEF  IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.        33 

have  been  far  more  than  compensated  by  the  purity,  energy, 
and  devotion  of  the  younger  representative  of  the  Christian 
name,  which,  disburdened  of  the  errors  and  traditions  of  cen- 
turies, so  much  more  worthily  bore  it.  But,  unhappily,  the  sep- 
aration ere  long,  though  not  at  all  so  deeply,  split  up  the  Prot- 
estant cause  itself ;  and  the  experience  and  spectacle  of  discord 
gave  the  first  chill  of  depression  to  the  hitherto  onward  move- 
ment. The  strife  of  Lutheran  and  Calvinist,  of  Remonstrant 
and  Contra-Remonstrant,  of  Conformist  and  Puritan,  shook  the 
Reformation  in  many  ways ;  and,  though  it  was  able  to  survive 
and  flourish,  the  sense  of  power  and  divine  mission,  which  goes 
with  unity,  was  abated. 

Still  more  disastrous  in  their  moral  and  spiritual  consequences 
wi-iv  tlie_religious  warsT  for  whirh  thp  Rpformatmn.  wps'lpsa  re- 
sponsible, as  they  had  in  them  a  national  and  ajpolitical  ele- 
ment, and  were,  in  the_  majn»JEm-Of  dftfonnfl  nn  fhp  Protest?**1* 
side,  and  not  of  aggression.  Still,  no  religious  cause  can  pass 
through  the  ordeal  of  war,  and  especially  of  long-continued  war, 
even  justly  and  successfully,  without  great  injury  to  its  purity ; 
and  the  struggles  of  the  Huguenots,  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  of 
the  Thirty  Years'  War,  and  even  our  own  Civil  Wars,  were  no 
exception.  The  picture  of  Wallenstein's  camp,  as  drawn  by 
Schiller,  shows  the  temptation  inevitable  in  such  scenes ;  and 
though  special  circumstances  may  have  restrained  the  evil  in 
certain  cases,  and  notably  in  the  army  of  the  English  Common- 
wealth, the  barbarizing  tendency  of  war  could  not  be  escaped, 
nor  the  doubt  thus  cast  on  religion  itself,  when  so  long  asso- 
ciated with  transactions  unlike  the  gospel  of  peace.  That  crisis 
thus  threatened  to  become  chronic,  which  in  the  early  centuries 
had  been  mostly  confined  to  the  reign  of  Constantino.  Nor 
did  Rome  ever  place  her  rival  in  a  more  cruel  dilemma  than 
that  of  being  suppressed  by  violence,  or  of  surviving,  laden  not 
only  with  the  reproaches  of  schism  and  heresy,  but  with  the 
calamities  of  divided  allegiance  and  of  civil  war.  The  peace- 
ful and  normal  development  of  the  Reformation  was  thus  ar- 
rested, and  treasures  of  evil  laid  up  for  the  generations  that 
were  to  come. 

These  consequences  were  indirectly  due  to  the  Reformation 
itself,  or  to  the  Reformation  mainly  as  provoking  Romish  as- 
sault and  intolerance.  But  there  was  another  set  of  influences 
more  independent,  and  which,  through  the  spontaneous  work- 
ing of  human  nature,  especially  where  the  Reformation  was 

2* 


34         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

crippled  as  described,  tended  to  the  weakening  of  Christianity 
and  the  creation  of  unbelief.  This  was  the  action  of  human 
culture  as  emancipated  by  the  Reformation.  There  is  nothing 
in  culture,  ideally  considered — that  is,  as  the  pursuit  of  truth 
and  beauty — but  what  is  favorable  to  Christianity.  But  if  man 
cannot,  in  his  fallen  state^pursue  culture  ideally,  if  he  can  only 
imprjlitrfrn  11 — especially  in  the  moral  region,  with~all"fhe  truth 
that  belongs  even  to  natural  conscience  and  which  the  first 
apologists  so  readily  acknowledged — deep  marks  of  his  own 
prejudices  and  errors,  then  it  follows  that  for  Christian  faith 
there  must  always  be  an  element  of  possible  danger  in  philoso- 
phy,"^ science,  and  in  literature,  where  Christian  influence  is 
not  strong  enough  to  lift  them  up  to  the  ideal  use  of  their  own 
methods,  and  accomplishment  of  their  own  ends.  The  Refor- 
mation, when  true  to  its  own  theory,  never  contemplated  serving 
itself  heir  to  the  authority  of  the  medieval  Church  over  all 
questions  of  human  speculation — in  other  words,  to  a  dictator- 
ship in  philosophy  and  literature.  It  was  because  it  protested 
against  this  on  the  field  of  religion,  and  was  understood  to 
mean  something  like  the  same  liberty  on  the  field  of  culture, 
that  it  had  culture  so  largely  for  its  ally  till  the  victory  was 
won.  But  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  this  alliance  between 
the  Humanists  and  the  Reformers,  an  alliance  where  each  sought 
his  own  ends,  should  always  continue.  The  Humanist  was  not 
likely,  as  such,  to  accept  always  the  doctrine  that  in  the  moral 
region  revelation  was  absolutely  necessary  to  complete  the  cir- 
cle of  his  knowledge ;  and  that,  even  in  the  proper  domain  of" 
reason,  the  elevating  and  purifying  motives  of  Christianity  were 
required  to  lift  philosophy,  literature,  "and  art  to  their  highest 
uses  and  ends.  The  wonderful  coalition  between  culture  and 
revelation,  which  we  see  at  the  Reformation  period,  was  likely 
ere  long  to  be  impaired,  possibly  not  without  some  misunder- 
standing of  the  provinces  on  either  side  ;  and  independence 
would  beget  isolation,  and  that,  in  turn,  hostility.  So  it  hap- 
pened 5  and  the  Reformation,  while  never  losing  its  own  favor- 
able impulse  to  culture  in  every  form,  lost  the  confidence,  the 
sympathy,  and  the  free  allegiance  of  a  number  of  gifted  minds, 
sufficiently  large  to  originate  movements  and  tendencies  which 
reacted  unfavorably  on  its  future  destinies.  Such  a  believing 
spirit  as  we  see  in  Germany,  making  literature,  after  Luther, 
run  so  much  in  one  channel,  and  in  England,  where,  amidst  a 
great  creative  period,  a  name  like  that  of  Bacon  stands  con- 


UNBELIEF  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        35 

spicuous  by  homage  to  the  Bible,  by-and-by  gives  place.  A 
great  thinker  like  Descartes,  though  born  on  the  soil  of  Rome, 
belongs  rather  to  the  Reformation,  and  continues  its  work  of 
emancipating  thought.  But  he  is  a  child  of  the  Reformation 
intellectually  rather  than  spiritually.  The  earnestness  of  his 
philosophy  is  on  the  side  of  natural  religion  rather  than  of 
Christianity  in  any  form  ;  and  though  some  of  the  noblest 
Christians  went  forth  from  his  school,  it  was  too  colorless  to 
be  absolved  from  all  blame  in  producing  Spinoza,  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  other  marks  of  unsettlement.  The  rise  of  a  mate- 
rialist philosophy,  vastly  inferior  to  that  of  Descartes,  in  the 
schemes  of  Gassendi  and  Ilobbes,  indicates,  in  spite  of  pro- 
fessed deference  to  the  Christian  faith,  an  alienation  from  its 
spirit;  and  it  is  from  elements  like  these,  more  and  more  mul- 
tiplying as  the  seventeenth  century  advances,  that  unbelief 
grows  to  a  head  and  bursts  into  self-manifestation. 

II.  Of  the  literature  of  unbelief  as  it  now  developed  itself,  it 
might  seem  most  natural  now  to  speak ;  and  then  to  touch  on 
the  replies  made  to  it  in  that  same  century.  But  it  so  happens 
that  the  most  important  apologetic  works  of  the  seventeenth 
century  were  not  of  the  nature  of  replies  to  particular  works 
from  the  other  side,  but  rather  of  replies  to  the  general  under- 
current of  unbelief  that  had  begun  to  make  itself  felt.  I  shall 
therefore  speak  first  of  this  apologetic  literature,  and  then  of 
the  particular  works  that  expressed  the  tone  of  unbelief  more 
definitely ;  as  it  is  more  important  for  my  purpose  to  show,  as 
I  shall  before  closing  do,  how  this  differed  from  the  unbelief 
of  the  next  century,  rather  than  how  it  was  met,  either  general- 
ly or  specially,  in  its  own  day. 

I  can  only  glance  at  the  apologetic  literature  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  which  showed  how  deeply  alive  the  Christian 
Church  was  to  the  danger  that  was  at  hand,  even  before  it  had 
fully  broken  forth.     I  limit  myself  to  two  works,  in  which, 
however,  the  apologetic  literature  of  any  century  might  well  be    \/ 
summed  up — the  "De  Veritate  Religionis  Christiana  "  of  Gro-    *> 
tius,  and  the  "  Pensees  "  of  Pascal. 

The  merits  and  attractions  of  the  work  of  Grotius  are  still 
profoundly  felt,  though  so  much  has  changed.  It  is  impossible 
not  to  be  moved  by  the  earnestness  of  spirit  which  made  him 
find  a  solace  for  political  defeat  and  hard  imprisonment  in  de- 
fending the  truth  of  Christianity  first  in  Flemish  verse  and 


36         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

afterwards  in  Latin  prose.*  His  wish  to  give  his  sailor  coun- 
trymen a  manual  from  which  to  impress  their  faith  on  pagans 
and  Turks,  as  well  as  Jews,  connects  apologetics  in  a  new  way 
with  missions.  The  old  patristic  idea  that  unbelief  takes  in 
all  forms  of  false  belief  is  thus  also  maintained,  as  likewise  by 
the  arguments  against  atheists  and  deniers  of  Providence  with 
which  the  work  opens.  The  proofs  from  miracles,  from  proph- 
ecy, and  from  the  moral  characteristics  of  the  gospel,  though 
they  lack  the  depth  of  Origen  and  Augustine,  have  the  clear- 
ness and  good  sense  peculiar  to  their  author,  and  are  more  sys- 
tematically arranged.  The  learning  displayed  in  stating  the 
genuineness  of  the  sacred  books,  and  in  illustrating  the  whole 
field  from  ancient  literature,  could  at  the  time  have  been  sur- 
passed by  no  living  scholar.  The  work  deserved  its  immense 
success,  and  on  the  side  of  external  evidence  struck  into  a  path 
which  will  never  be  deserted.  But  it  was  exactly  at  this  point 
that  its  weakness  arose,  for  the  spiritual  history  of  its  author 
did  not  enable  him  to  do  equal  justice  to  the  internal  evidence 
of  Christianity.  Though  sincerely  attached  to  Christianity  as 
a  divine  revelation,  and  in  essential  harmony  with  its  capital 
doctrines,  as  appeared  in  his  defence  of  Christ's  satisfaction,  he 
shared  in  the  bias  of  the  Remonstrant  school  to  a  colder  and 
more  colorless  reflection  of  them  than  in  the  more  fervent  stage 
of  the  Reformation,  and  the  light  of  the  supernatural  without 
was  not  equally  supported  by  the  kindling  sense  of  the  super- 
natural within.  Hence  the  character  of  Christ,  the  adaptation 
of  Christianity,  and  the  witness  of  living  Christian  experience 
— in  short,  what  the  Reformation  meant,  without  fully  drawing 
it  out  into  a  proof,  by  the  testimonium  Spiritus  Sancti — are  so 
faintly  touched  as  to  be  practically  excluded. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  other  and  greater  work  of  this 
century  (in  some  respects  the  greatest  in  the  whole  career  of 
apologetic  literature)  came  in  —  the  "  Pensees "  of  Pascal. 
Though  growing  up  on  the  territory  of  Rome,  and  in  connection 
with  one  of  the  most  remarkable  passages  in  its  history — the  at- 
tempt to  unite  Augustinian  theology  with  Romish  discipline — the 
effort  of  Pascal  was  essentially  in  the  spirit  of  the  Reformation, 
for  it  based  faith  not  upon  the  testimony  of  a  Church,  or  a  set 
of  so-called  evidences  outside  of  Christianity  itself,  but  upon 
the  characteristic  nature  and  operation  of  Christianity.  The 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  B. 


UNBELIEF   IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.        37 

greatness  and  misery  of  man ;  the  enigmas  of  his  being  which 
nothing  else  can  solve ;  its  desiderata,  which  nothing  else  can 
supply ;  the  coming  of  Christ  in  his  own  order  of  greatness ; 
the  highest  of  the  three,  physical,  intellectual,  and  spiritual,  and 
as  much  requiring  the  seeing  eye  to  discern  it  as  the  others, 
while  alone  awakening  in  the  soul  the  thrill  of  deepest  recogni- 
tion— this  is  the  key-note  of  Pascal's  apologetic,  to  which  all 
questions  of  books  and  history,  all  miracles,  prophecy,  and 
propagation,  are  but  subsidiary.  If  he  can  awake  the  soul  out 
of  the  slumber  of  indifference,  make  it  find  its  true  self  in  gen- 
uine awe,  fear,  remorse,  perplexity,  and  unsatisfied  longing,  then 
the  condition  is  found  of  finding  God  in  Christ ;  the  Bible,  with 
all  its  wonders,  predictions,  prefigurations,  leads  up  to  the  Sav- 
iour ;  and  yet  he  is  discerned  not  so  much  by  what  these  prove 
— though  the  proof  is  solid — as  by  the  lisjht  which  streams 
from  his  own  person  and  work  as  the  God  Incarnate,  the  Re- 
deemer of  men — their  Redeemer  and  Last  End  in  one.  "  This 
religion,  so  great  in  miracles,  so  great  in  knowledge,  after  hav- 
ing exhausted  all  its  miracles  and  all  its  wisdom,  rejects  all,  and 
says  that  it  has  neither  signs  nor  wisdom,  but  the  cross  and 
folly."*  Pascal  is  thus  the  most  evangelical  of  apologists.  It 
is  with  him  nothing  to  conquer  atheism  or  deism  by  other 
weapons,  if  the  spiritual  glory  of  Christ  has  not  subdued  the 
heart  to  living  faith.  He  is  rich  in  new  arguments  on  all  the 
standard  topics ;  his  fragments  more  than  the  full  thoughts  of 
other  men,  his  divinations  more  than  the  results  of  all  their 
learning.  But  he  never  loses  the  central  point  of  view — the 
dawn  of  Christ's  heavenly  light  upon  the  humble  and  loving 
heart.  This  too,  as  he  solemnly  urges,  may  be  defeated  by 
pride  and  self-will,  that  love  the  darkness.  Hence  the  idea 
which  lie  is  never  wearied  of  repeating,  that  Christ  came  not 
only  to  be  revealed,  but  to  be  concealed.f 

III.  The  illustration  of  this  profound  truth  we  have  in  the 
declared  unbelief  of  this  seventeenth  century,  to  which  we  now 
turn.  It  is  impossible  to  do  more  than  select  the  leading  in- 

*  "  Pensfics,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  354. 

t  "II  y  a  assez  <le  lumiere  pour  ceux  qui  ne  desirent  que  de  voir,  et 
assez  d'obscurite  pour  ceux  qui  ont  line  disposition  contrnire"  (Faugere's 
edition,  vol.  ii.,  p.  151).  Pascal  here,  as  not  infrequently  elsewhere,  un- 
consciously repeats  Origen.  Thus,  speaking  of  Christ,  he  says,  "  tTrtfttyBij 
•yap  ov  ftovov  'iva  yvwaOy,  a\\'  'Ira  icai  XaOy"  ("Contra  Cels.,"  ii.  07). 


38         UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

stances;  and  they  must  be  treated  not  in  the  way  of  full  dis- 
cussion, but  with  reference  to  the  more  developed  unbelief  of 
next  century,  to  which  they  led  the  way,  and  of  which  they 
came  short  by  characteristic  differences.  The  types  appear,  and 
they  are  also  preparations ;  but  the  complete  growth  falls  after- 
wards. This  is  not  equally  true  of  all  the  schools  of  unbelief ; 
but  it  is  sufficiently  true  to  warrant  this  rough  generalization 
that  the  unbelief  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  more  veiled 
*T->and  subdued,  and,  so  to  speak,  tempered  by  lingering  reverence 
f  for  Christianity,  while  that  of  the  eighteenth  is  more  pro- 
nounced  and  more  antagonistic  to  every  distinctively  Christian 
claim.  This  I  shall  now  attempt  to  make  out  in  regard  to  the 
schools  into  which  the  unbelief  of  the  seventeenth  century  may 
be  divided.  These  are  three— -jirsts  the  Deistic*  with  its  two 
types,  the  one  more  spiritualist  represented  by  Lord  Herbert  of 
CheTbuYyjTTiejoUier,  more  jnaterialist,  _repxes_e.nted._by:  Ilohhcs ; 
secondly,  the  Pantheistic^  represented  by  Spinoza  ;  and,  thirdly, 
the  Sceptical,  represented  by  Bayle.  The  veiled  character  of 
unbelief  is  most  conspicuous  in  the  earlier  writers,  Herbert  and 
Hobbes ;  it  is  less  seen,  though  still  present,  in  Spinoza,  who 
otherwise  stands  so  much  apart  amidst  the  thought  of  his  own 
century  and  of  the  next;  and  it  is  least  in  Bayle,  who  lives 
more  on  the  confines  of  the  century  of  revolt  and  iconoclasm, 
though  still  a  doubter  as  to  his  own  negations. 

1.  In  taking  up  the  first  school,  or  Deistic,  we  have  to  begin 
with  the  representative  of  Deism  on  its  most  favorable  side, 
the  spiritualistic  ;  and  here  we  encounter  one  (Lord  Herbert, 
1581-1648),  whose  ideas  reappeared  all  through,  and  who, 
though  not  a  writer  of  the  first  mark,  handled  with  no  small 
ability,  both  metaphysical  and  historical,  the  negative  argument, 
v  which,  unhappily,  unlike  his  brother,  the  celebrated  Christian 
poet,  George  Herbert,  he  had  espoused.  Two  radical  ideas  of 
Deism  make  up  the  staple  of  Edward  Herbert's  writings — that 
Christianity  as  a  revelation  is  not  needed ;  and  that  if  it  were,  it 
could  not  be  proved.  The  first  idea  is  worked  out  on  its  met- 
aphysical side  in  his  book  "De  Veritate"  (1624),  his  earliest 
writing,  and  then  on  its  historical  in  his  last,  a  posthumous  one, 
"De  Religione  Gentilium  "  (1663).  The  second  idea,  besides 
frequent  repetition  elsewhere,  is  taken  up  in  his  intermediate 
tract,  "  Religio  Laici,"  appended  to  his  "  DC  Causis  Errorum." 
His  book  "  De  Veritate  "  does  not  broadly  set  forth  that  Chris- 


UNBELIEF  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY.        39 

tianity  is  superfluous,  but  veils  this  result  under  a  discussion  on 
universal  and  necessary  knowledge,  in  which  the  writer  antici- 
pates some  of  the  philosophical  views  of  Kant  as  to  a  priori 
truth,  and,  with  application  to  religion,  marks  off  five  native 
truths  as  thus  the  universal  possession  of  the  human  mind. 
These  notitice  communes,  as  he  calls  them,  or  which  have  been 
called  by  others  the  Deist's  Bible,  are  that  there  is  a  supreme 
God ;  that  he  is  to  be  worshipped ;  that  the  principal  part  of 
his  worship  is  virtue;  that  men  ought  to  repent  of  sin;  and 
that  there  are  rewards  and  punishments  here  and  hereafter.* 
He  leaves  it  to  be  inferred  that  these  notions  make  up  a  uni- 
versal and  sufficient  creed,  with  no  room  for  revelation  ;  though 
here  he  wavers,  and  even  at  times  professes  to  treat  revelation 
as  of  great  importance.  But  if  Herbert  really  meant  practical- 
ly to  supersede  revelation,  this  by  no  means  follows  from  his 
premises.f  For  all  these  five  truths  are  accepted  by  Christian- 
ity, and  yet  there  is  nothing  to  hinder -Christianity 'from  being 
a  special  help  to  God's  worship,  to  virtue,  to  repentance,  to 
blessed  immortality — indeed,  the  only  one,  for,  as  Lord  Herbert 
is  only  laying  down  a  theory  of  knowledge,  unless  practice  in 
religion  be  equal  to  knowledge,  his  whole  procedure  is  a  begging 
of  the  question.  This  is  still  more  apparent  when,  as  he  was 
bound  to  do,  he  goes  in  his  other  work  into  history,  and  faces 
the  actual  religion  of  the  Gentile  world.  His  work  is  here  a 
starting-point,  for  modern  times,  of  the  literature  of  compara- 
tive religion.  But  it  is  in  a  high  degree  eccentric  and  unsatis- 
factory. The  boundless  mass  of  the  pagan  religions,  as  it  lay 
in  all  sources — poetical,  historical,  philosophical  —  he  repro- 
duces, with  hardly  any  classification  further  than  that  he  divides 
the  gods  into  the  supreme;  the  elemental,  that  is,  planets,  stars, 
and  sky,  in  which  he  runs  together  the  data  of  modern  astron- 
omy with  the  old  legends  as  to  Mercury,  Venus,  and  Jupiter; 
and  the  deified  human ;  adding  to  the  whole  the  catalogue  of 
the  dii  majorum  and  minorum  gentium,  and  bringing  in  else- 
where the  deified  virtues,  Faith,  Concord,  etc.  He  thus  goes 
over  the  same  ground  with  the  Christian  apologists,  but  with  a 
prevailingly  softening  tendency,  so  as  to  make  paganism  as 
rational  and  amiable  as  possible,  though  the  picture  is  still  suf- 
ficiently dark.  He  does  not  reproduce  the  allegories  dealt  in 

*  "I)e  Veritnte,"pp.  2G5-2G8 ;    "De  Relig.  Gentil.,"  cap.  xv.,  p.  210. 
t  See  Appendix,  Note  C. 


40          UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

by  the  pagan  philosophers ;  but  sees  little  in  principle  to  object 
to  in  the  adoration  of  the  supreme  God  by  a  symbolical  wor- 
ship of  nature,  and  even  of  heroes,  though  he  cannot  include 
the  daemons  of  Plotinus  and  Porphyry  ;  nor  does  it  appear  that 
he  would  have  had  any  difficulty  in  conforming  in  practice  to 
the  ritual  of  paganism,  while  intent  on  spiritualizing  it.  His 
most  eccentric  theory  is  his  deduction  of  all  the  darker  parts  of 
polytheism,  and  of  polytheism  itself  (considered  as  other  than 
the  symbolic  worship  of  one  God),  from  priestcraft.  Unlike 
the  great  body  of  writers  of  his  school,  who  with  Hume  have 
traced  polytheism  by  a  slow  process  up  to  monotheism,  Her- 
bert holds  something  like  a  golden  age  or  primitive  purity  of 
natural  religion,  though  without  anything  in  that  stage  like 
revelation  ;  and  the  apostasy  to  elemental  and  other  worship 
is  due  to  priests  and  ministers  of  religion  seeking  to  create 
new  rites  and  new  votaries  for  their  own  advantage.  This, 
however,  cannot  be  carried  out  without  involving  the  human 
race  so  seriously  in  the  blame  as  to  make  the  insufficiency  of 
natural  religion  manifest;  nor  has  Herbert  with  any  clearness 
displayed  the  continued  reception  of  his  five  articles  as  an  out- 
standing fact,  so  as  to  bar  the  Christian  method  of  recovering 
religion  from  this  confessed  corruption  and  depravation. 

The  second  leading  idea  of  Herbert  is  less  fully  worked  out 
by  him — the  inadmissibility  of  proof  in  the  case  of  a  revelation. 
His  objections  as  to  that  proof  not  being  innate,  or  not  accessi- 
ble universally,  are  taken  up  and  elaborated  by  succeeding 
writers  —  by  none  more  than  by  Rousseau  in  his  "  Savoy 
Vicar ;"  but  on  his  own  part  there  is  some  wavering  between 
mere  difficulty  and  virtual  impossibility  of  proof;  and  in 
his  own  case,  as  has  often  been  repeated,  he  inconsistently 
sought,  and,  as  he  believed,  obtained,  for  the  publication  of  his 
"  De  Veritate,"  a  sign  from  Heaven.*  Herbert  is  thus  restrain- 
ed by  not  a  few  lingering  elements  of  reverence,  from  the  un- 
measured assaults  of  next  century ;  ahd  he  even  concedes  that, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  Christianity  in  the  early  ages  extracted  all 
that  was  morally  good  in  paganism,  so  that  only  a  caput  mor- 
tuum  remained. f 

*  The  sign  in  question,  which  has  often  been  cited,  is  first  quoted  from 
the  then  unpublished  Life  of  Lord  Herbert,  by  Leland,  in  his  "Deistical 
Writers"  (i.24r).  The  observations  of  Leland.  on  the  alleged  sign  are  very 
judicious. 

t  "Kelig.  Gentil.,"p.  230. 


UNBELIEF    IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        41 

The  representative  of  materialistic  unbelief,  Hobbes  (1588- 
1679),  though  a  far  more  vigorous  thinker  than  Herbert,  and 
the  master  of  an  unsurpassed  English  style,  came  forward  less 
as  a  revolutionist  in  the  regions  of  Christian  faith  than  in  those 
of  ethics  and  politics,  and  had  smaller  influence  in  the  former 
than  in  the  latter.  But  necessarily  faith  in  Christianity  was 
grievously  prejudiced  by  his  errors  at  earlier  points,  as  to  the 
sensuous  origin  and  nature  of  all  ideas;  the  strictly  self-re- 
garding character  of  all  virtuous  motive ;  and  the  dependence 
of  society  for  its  existence  and  well-being  upon  a  central  power, 
created  as  an  escape  from  mutual  war,  and  wielding  absolute 
despotic  authority.  Any  one  of  those  principles  of  Hobbes, 
rigidly  carried  out,  would  subvert  religion  from  its  foundations ; 
for  if  everything  cognizable  be  strictly  confined  to  sense,  the  idea 
of  God  becomes  so  degraded  and  limited  as  to  be  really  denied ; 
if  disinterested  affection  do  not  exist  in  man,  though  unity  and 
physical  power  with  intelligence  might  remain  to  God,  there 
would  be  in  him  no  moral  attraction  or  greatness;  and  if  the 
will  of  a  central  human  authority  became  absolute  law,  though 
this  law  might  in  some  sense  be  held  to  be  divine,  and  to  carry 
with  it  a  divine  revelation,  yet  religion,  as  relating  the  individ- 
ual by  a  personal  conscience  to  a  supreme  Lawgiver,  and  rest- 
ing on  his  ultimate  authority,  would  be  abolished. 

It  is  wholly  needless  to  push  further  the  consequences  in  the 
direction  of  materialism,  fatalism,  and  even  atheism,  which 
follow  from  Hobbes's  denial  of  a  spiritual  principle  in  man,  and 
of  disinterested  virtue.  But  a  few  words  are  needed  to  lay 
open  the  singular  texture  of  his  theory  of  government,  and  to 
show  how,  in  professing  to  receive  Scripture,  he  really  invali- 
dates its  authority.  The  veiled  nature  of  his  unbelief  will  thus 
appear  in  full  light,  and  at  the  same  time  its  far-reaching  extent. 

Hobbes,  like  Herbert,  has  a  theory  of  religion,  deriving  it 
from  (or  rather  connecting  it  with)  man's  ignorance  of  causes ; 
as  also  from  fear  prompting  the  worship  of  the  invisible  made 
in  man's  image;  and  from  prognostics  taken  for  revelations. 
But  these  and  whatever  workings  of  what  we  may  call,  on  his 
crude,  selfish  principle,  moral  law,  do  not  yet  create  obligation. 
There  is  only  the  right  of  every  one  to  everything,  with  the 
right  of  defending  it,  and  the  second  right  of  renouncing  this 
for  the  sake  of  peace,  and  entering  into  the  social  state,  whereby 
the  Sovereign  or  Leviathan  becomes  the  universal  dictator,  and 
wields  absolute  power.  So  far  as  appears,  Hobbes  does  not 


42         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

bring  in  religion  in  connection  with  this  social  compact,  but 
derives  justice  from  the  will  of  the  sovereign  body  thus  ex- 
pressed, and  from  a  third  natural  right  or  law,  viz.,  that  con- 
tracts are  to  be  observed.  In  the  other  laws  of  nature,  such  as 
gratitude,  sociability,  forgiveness,  etc.,  to  the  number  of  nine- 
teen, there  is  no  mention  of  God,  but  only  of  personal  good  to 
all  the  members  of  the  body,  these  laws  being  only  obligatory  on 
that  condition.  Indeed,  religion  only  brings  us  into  contact 
with  God,  by  contact  with  his  vicegerent,  the  magistrate ;  and 
though  a  revelation  may  be  granted  to  individuals,  it  can  only 
influence  themselves,  but  cannot  convey  itself  beyond,  so  that 
the  magistrate  is  really  in  the  place  of  God.  "  The  monarch, 
or  the  sovereign  assembly  only,  hath  immediate  authority  from 
God  to  teach  and  instruct  the  people,"  *  so  that  no  revelation 
can  go  higher.  Hobbes,  indeed,  allows  a  "  kingdom  of  God  in 
nature,"  but  resolves  his  attributes  into  power,  and  founds  his 
worship  on  this ;  and  then  leaves  to  the  will  of  the  magistrate 
"  those  attributes  which  the  sovereign  ordaineth,  in  the  worship 
of  God,  for  signs  of  honor."  f  Hobbes  hardly  acknowledges, 
in  so  many  words,  that  a  professed  revelation  is  to  be  received 
or  rejected  by  the  voice  of  the  magistrate;  but  his  system 
admits  of  no  other  nexus,  and  he  is  express  as  to  the  reception 
of  the  canon  of  Scripture — "  Those  books  only  are  canonical, 
that  is,  law  in  every  nation,  which  are  established  for  such  by 
the  sovereign  authority."!  So  also  as  to  Scripture  interpreta- 
tion— "  When  Christian  men  take  not  their  Christian  sovereign 
for  God's  prophet,  they  must  either  take  their  own  dreams, 
etc.  .  .  .  and,  by  this  means  destroying  all  laws,  human  and 
divine,  reduce  all  order,  government,  and  society  to  the  first 
chaos  of  violence  and  civil  war."§  Hobbes  might  here  have 
stopped,  as  the  magistrate  thus  armed  did  not  need,  and  could 
even  punish,  his  private  interpretations.  But  in  support  of  his 
theory  he  gives  a  scheme  of  Bible  doctrine  and  history  which 
is  as  paradoxical  as  ever  arose  in  any  school.  This  is  to  the 
effect  that  the  apostles  had  no  supreme  power,  because  they 
wanted  civil  authority ;  that  their  decrees  were  only  advices 
till  the  civil  power  came  over  to  Christianity ;  and  that  even 
Christ  will  only  begin  to  reign  at  his  second  coming,  his  sway 

*  "  Levintlmn,"  Works,  vol.  iii.,  p.  228.     Molesworth's  edition. 

t  Ibid.,  iii.,  p.  356.  !  Ibid.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  366. 

§lbid.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  427. 


UNBELIEF  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        43 

through  magistrates  in  the  meantime  being  a  mere  accident  of 
their  natural  office.  Hobbes's  whole  doctrine  of  Christ  is  low. 
The  Trinity  and  atonement  are  held  in  word,  and  not  in  power. 
The  essence  of  Christianity  is  that  Jesus  is  the  Messiah,  with- 
out further  definition ;  and  the  kingdom  destined  for  him  at 
the  last  is  only  a  resumption  of  the  peculiar  Jewish  theocracy 
which  ended  with  the  election  of  Saul,  and  of  which  this  earth, 
and  not  heaven,  is  to  be  the  seat,  very  much  as  is  held  by  so- 
called  Christadelphians.  While  the  direct  sway  of  Christ 
through  his  apostles  and  their  word  is  thus  reduced,  the  Chris- 
tian is  allowed  by  Hobbes  to  deny  Christ  at  his  sovereign's  bid- 
ding, where  the  act  is  not  his,  but  his  sovereign's ;  and  though 
he  says  that  a  Christian  among  infidels  must  be  faithful,  he 
limits  the  duty  of  martyrdom  to  Christ's  first  witnesses,  and  he 
will  not  allow  that  an  obligation  lies  on  a  Mohammedan  among 
Christians  to  resist  State-enforced  conformity  to  Christianity.* 
He  tries  to  show  how  safe  in  practical  working  his  rule  is,  for 
no  Christian  ruler  would  punish  a  man  who  confessed  that 
Jesus  was  the  Christ ;  and  no  non-Christian  ruler  would  punish 
a  man  who,  besides  waiting  only  for  a  future  kingdom,  was 
known  to  be  willing  at  the  bidding  of  that  king  to  obey  all  his 
laws.  Such  is  the  poor  and  servile  end  of  Hobbes's  scheme, 
morally  considered,  which  is  also  worked  up  (as  has  been  said), 
with  whatever  of  Christianity  it  professes  to  retain,  in  a  very 
meagre  and  rationalized  shape.  This  is  the  distinctive  char- 
acter of  his  position  as  contrasted  with  what  followed.  The 
direct  authority  and  self-evidencing  witness  of  revelation  he 
had  given  up  in  favor  of  a  State-popedom ;  but  he  still  pro- 
fessed to  follow  Scripture,  even  when  dragging  it  at  the  wheels 
of  despotism,  and  defacing  its  characteristic  features. 

2.  That  the  seventeenth  century  could  only  utter  its  unbe- 
lief with  reserve,  or  write  it  as  in  cipher  under  a  professed 
faith  in  the  Biblical  record,  we  see  in  the  greatest  and,  for 
future  days,  most  influential  of  all  the  non-Christian  writers  of 
that  age,  the  representative  of  pantheism,  Spinoza  (1632-1677). 
Here  we  still  deal  with  a  living  name,  and  one  whose  place  and 
work  are  so  well  known  that  little  requires  to  be  said,  all  the 
more  that,  as  already  hinted,  Spinoza  was  not  one  of  the  great 
moving  forces  of  the  special  unbelief  that  soon  after  him  arose, 

*  "Lev.,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  494. 


_  , 

"/ 


44         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY, 

but  has  only  found  his  widest  echo  in  our  own  century.  It  is 
impossible  to  deny  the  power  of  one  who  has  influenced  names 
Lessing  and  Goethe,  like  Schelling  and  Hegel,  and  who, 
more  especially  in  theology,  besides  leaving  his  mark  so  much 
on  Schleiermacher,  has  foreshadowed  the  naturalistic  rational- 
ism of  Semler,  Eichhorn,  and  Paulus,  the  mythical  theory  of 
Strauss,  and  the  vision  hypothesis  of  Baur,  Scholten,  and  Renan. 
But  we  are  here  chiefly  concerned  to  show  that  the  antagonism 
of  Spinoza  to  Christianity,  as  in  the  proper  sense  a  revelation, 
was,  as  in  the  case  of  Herbert  and  of  Hobbes,  disguised  ;  while 
it  must  be  added  that  the  child  of  the  synagogue  rather  ap- 
proaches to  Christianity  while  they  retire,  and  that,  in  spite 
of  the  sad  arrest  which  barred  his  conversion  to  distinctively 
Christian  faith,  he  has  left  testimonies  to  it,  of  which,  in  the 
long  history  of  unbelieving  opposition,  there  are  few  examples. 
The  degree  of  reserve  and  qualification  which  marks  the  hos- 
tile position  of  Spinoza  towards  Christianity  will  be  best  appre- 
ciated by  bringing  out  first  the  variation  between  his  two  prin- 
cipal treatises,  his  "  Tractatus  Theologico-politicus"  on  the 
one  side,  and  his  posthumous  "  Ethica  "  on  the  other  ;  and 
then  the  concessions  elsewhere  made  by  him  to  Christianity, 
which,  settle  the  question  between  his  two  chief  works  as  we 
will,  still  remain. 

The  system  contained  in  the  "Tractatus"  (1670)  is,  roughly 
speaking,  rationalistic,  going  higher  than  Deism  in  its  apprecia- 
tion  of  the*  excellence  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  Script- 
ures,  yet  excluding  everything  (properly  speaking)  miraculous; 
and  though,  with  occasional  pantheistic  tendencies,  still  no- 
where revealing  such  pantheism  as  is  found  in  the  "Ethica" 
(1677).  It  is  so  far  the  rationalism  of  a  Jew,  more  occupied 
with  the  Old  Testament  than  the  New  ;  but  the  principles  laid 
down  in  one  region  necessarily  apply,  and  indeed  are  applied, 
in  the  other,  though  Spinoza  everywhere  writes  as  one  to  whom 
Christ  is  unspeakably  more  than  Closes. 

In  his  "  Tractatus  Theologico-politicus,"  Spinoza  attempts  to 
maintain  a  system  of  revelation,  which  shall  leave  room  for 
reason,  whether  in  its  natural  workings  in  the  common  mind, 
or  as  perfected  by  philosophy.  The  Old  Testament  prophets, 
in  word  and  writing,  were  really  oracles  of  divine  communica- 
tion, and  by  a  marvellous  gift  of  imagination  taught  precious 
moral  truth,  though  Spinoza  will  not  call  it  truth,  but  piety. 
They  fall  into  many  errors,  and  God  even  accommodated  him- 


UNBELIEF   IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        45 

self  to  their  mistakes ;  yet  they  were  vouched  for  by  their 
signs  and  by  their  life.  Ordinary  moral  light,  and  prophecy 
too,  existed  more  or  less  outside  of  them,  as  in  the  case  of 
Balaam ;  nor  can  Spinoza,  with  his  lower  estimate  of  history, 
and  his  non-admission  of  a  Messianic  future,  do  justice  to  the 
grandeur  of  prophecy  and  its  sublime  unity  as  pointing  to  a 
divine  Incarnation  and  kingdom  of  heaven.  Miracles,  in  the 
proper  sense,  he  denies,  as  involving  a  change  in  God's  immu- 
table plan,  though  it  is  not  easy  to  reconcile  this  with  the  attest- 
ing of  prophets  by  signs,  unless  the  key  is  to  be  found  in  a 
note  to  the  French  edition,  which  compares  the  prophets  to 
giants,  or  other  extraordinary  but  not  supernatural  beings.*  It 
is  probably  in  the  same  sense  that  a  remarkable  tribute  to  Christ 
is  to  be  interpreted,  who,  as  a  prophet,  is  exalted  far  above 
Moses,  as  one  by  whose  mind  God  manifested  himself  to  the 
apostles,  while  Moses  was  a  voice  in  the  air.f  Spinoza  speaks 
everywhere  with  respect  of  the  apostles,  though  they  are  more 
like  doctors ;  the  afflatus  in  them  being  less  startling  than  in 
the  prophets,  and  more  allied  to  deduction  and  argument. 
With  these  concessions  to  the  substance  of  Scripture,  there  is 
a  very  free  handling  of  the  so-called  accidents ;  and  Spinoza 
carries  out  the  distinction,  which  he  is  perhaps  the  first  in 
modern  times  to  state,  between  the  Bible  and  the  Word  of 
God.  The  Pentateuch,  and  all  the  later  historical  books  to  2d 
Kings,  he  regards  as  written  by  Ezra ;  the  books  of  Chronicles 
perhaps  not  earlier  than  the  Maccabean  times ;  while  the  first 
part  of  Daniel,  with  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Esther,  fall  to  one 
author  even  after  the  Maccabean  period.  These  critical  views, 
which  have  found  few  supporters,  and  which  do  not  bear  out 
the  admiring  estimate  sometimes  given  of  his  critical  sagacity, 
do  not  hinder  Spinoza  from  regarding  the  essence  of  Scripture 
history  as  intact,  and  especially  the  history  of  our  Saviour,  so 
that,  as  far  as  history  is  needed  for  moral  and  spiritual  ends,  it 
is  sufficiently  recorded.  In  like  manner,  the  moral  and  spiritual 
parts  themselves,  according  to  him,  suffer  nothing  ;  for  the  end 
of  Scripture  is  not  to  make  out  a  philosophical  system,  but  a 
practical  scheme  of  justice  and  charity,  apprehended  by  faith 
and  reduced  to  obedience,  which  is  really  the  same  thing ;  and 

*  This  is  reprinted  in  the  appendix  to  the  "Tractatus"  in  Paulus's 
edition  (i.  430),  from  which  the  other  quotations  are  given, 
t  Spinoza,  Op.,  i.,  p.  168. 


46         UNBELIEF   IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

as  reason  and  faith  move  in  entirely  different  orbits,  an  in- 
definite amount  of  error  may  consist  with  pious  sincerity. 
Spinoza,  however,  does  not  go  the  length  of  allowing  total  error; 
and  though,  to  him,  the  idea  of  common  notions  ought  rigor- 
ously to  be  an  encroachment  on  faith,  his  summary  is  not  very 
different  from  that  of  Herbert,  admitting  repentance,  but  ex- 
cluding belief  in  immortality.  The  following  passage  startles 
us,  as  granting  a  deep  and  wide  necessity  for  revelation,  and 
ending  the  whole  discussion  in  a  strain  hardly  consistent  with 
the  other  positions  of  Spinoza  :  "  Before  I  proceed  to  other 
matters,  I  wish  it  expressly  noted,  though  it  has  been  said  al- 
ready, that  with  regard  to  the  necessity  and  use  of  Holy  Script- 
ure, or  revelation,  I  estimate  it  very  highly.  For  since  we  can- 
not perceive  by  the  light  of  nature  that  simple  obedience  is  the 
way  to  salvation,  and  revelation  alone  teaches  us,  beyond  the 
scope  of  reason,  that  this  is  the  plan  of  God's  singular  grace,  it 
follows  that  Scripture  has  brought  great  comfort  to  mortals. 
For  all  can  obey  absolutely,  while  there  are  very  few,  when 
compared  with  the  whole  human  race,  who  acquire  the  habit  of 
virtue  by  the  sole  guidance  of  reason,  and  therefore,  without 
this  testimony  of  Scripture,  we  should  doubt  of  the  salvation 
of  almost  all."  * 

It  is  remarkable,  and  has  often  been  noticed,  how  much  the 
political  scheme  of  Spinoza,  which  comes  at  the  end  of  his  the- 
ological, agrees  with  Hobbes.  There  is  the  same  original  war, 
the  same  dependence  of  right  upon  power,  and  the  same  found- 
ing of  absolutism  upon  contract,  though  Spinoza  takes  the  re- 
publican side  rather  than  the  monarchical.  But  he  seizes  bet- 
ter than  Hobbes  the  spirit  of  the  Old  Testament  as  a  theocracy, 
and  draws  from  it  lessons  favorable  to  his  own  views,  remark- 
ing the  advantage  of  having  the  priestly  power  separated  from 
the  executive,  and  only  regretting  the  confinement  of  the  priest- 
hood to  one  tribe;  though  he  fails  to  see  that  this  was  con- 
nected with  the  typical  design  of  sacrifice ;  and  also  lamenting 
the  unstable  equilibrium  caused  by  the  function  of  the  proph- 
ets, on  which  he  founds  an  argument  for  restraining  the  liberty 
of  prophesying  in  modern  times.  How  little  Spinoza,  in  these 
servile  views,  was  in  harmony  with  the  alleged  freedom  of  the 
eighteenth  century  must  be  apparent ;  though  candor  requires 
us  to  make  the  same  remark  in  the  case  of  a  great  Christian 

*  Spinoza,  Op.,  i..  p.  359. 


UNBELIEF  IN   THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        47 

advocate  like  Grotius.  But  had  Christianity  acted  with  such 
deference  to  civil  authority  as  Spinoza  lauds,  it  could  not  have 
moved  a  single  step ;  and  the  toleration  for  which  Spinoza — 
here  more  elevated  than  Hobbes — ends  by  pleading,  and  plead- 
ing forcibly,  rests  only  upon  considerations  of  expediency,  such 
as  the  necessary  differences  of  opinion,  and  the  dangers  to  the 
commonwealth*  in  suppressing  them  ;  while  his  own  professed 
readiness  to  submit  his  doctrines  to  the  authorities  in  Holland 
is  a  great  contrast  to  the  sublime  words  in  which  Justin  Martyr 
calls  the  Roman  magistrates  to  repentance,  in  the  close  of  his 
second  Apology.* 

It  must  ever  leave  a  shade  on  the  memory  of  Spinoza  that 
he  should  have  sent  out  a  work  like  that  thus  described,  adapt- 
ed all  through  to  the  language  of  ordinary  Theism,  and  even  so 
far  of  Christian  faith,  while  he  had  in  reserve,  and  was  circulat- 
ing among  his  friends,  th.o  mature  treatise  which,  published 
after  his  death,  by  his  own  instructions,  revealed  the  pantheistic 
basis  of  his  whole  scheme  of  thought.  It  has  been  held,  in- 
deed, by  some  that  even  this  posthumous  work,  the  "  Ethica," 
may,  in  spite  of  extreme  and  overstrained  utterances,  be  brought 
within  the  limits  of  Theism.  In  this  I  can  by  no  means  con- 
cur; for,  even  if  we  grant  that  a  sentence  like  this  (one  of 
many),  "  Every  idea  of  any  body  whatever,  or  singular  thing, 
actually  existing,  necessarily  involves  the  eternal  and  infinite 
essence  of  God,"f  may  be  limited  to  connection  of  thought, 
instead  of  pointing  to  inclusion  of  being;  and  if  we  give  Spi- 
noza every  credit  for  sincerity  in  holding  that  he  was  more 
true  than  others  to  the  words  of  the  apostle,  "  In  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being;"  we  yet  cannot  but  feel  that 
the  sea  of  infinitude  which,  in  his  system,  swims  around  the 
creature,  really  engulfs  it;  and  that  when  he  comes  to  the  end 
of  his  fifth  book,  and  to  the  issue,  for  him,  of  all  speculation 
and  all  practice,  the  intellectual  love  of  God,  he  has  not  only 


*  "  Apol.,"  ii.,  §  12.  "In  persuading  men,  as  in  this  treatise  we  have 
done,  to  shun  these  doctrines,  and  those  who  practise  and  follow  them,  we 
encounter  a  manifold  opposition  ;  but  we  heed  it  not,  since  we  know  that 
God,  the  witness  of  all,  is  just.  Would  that  some  one  would  mount  a, 
lofty  tribunal,  and  with  a  tragic  voice  proclaim,  Be  ashamed,  be  ashamed, 
ye  who  charge  the  innocent  with  what  yourselves  openly  do  ;  and  who 
transfer  crimes  familiar  to  yourselves  and  your  gods  to  those  who  have  not 
the  least  fellowship  with  them.  Repent  and  return  to  wisdom !" 

t  Spinoza,  Op.,  ii.,  p.  111). 


48         UNBELIEF   IX   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

left  out  all  the  usual  landmarks  of  moral  responsibility,  but 
identified  the  object  of  love  with  its  subject,  so  as  to  make  God 
and  the  creature  one.  "The  intellectual  love  of  the  mind  to 
God  is  the  very  love  of  God  wherewith  he  loves  himself,  not 
in  so  far  as  he  is  infinite,  but  in  so  far  as  he  can  be  explained 
by  the  essence  of  the  human  mind  considered  under  the  form 
of  eternity  ;  that  is,  the  intellectual  love  of  the  mind  to  God  is 
a  part  of  the  infinite  love  wherewith  God  loves  himself ;"  and 
also,  "The  love  of  God  to  men  and  the  intellectual  love  of  the 
mind  to  God  is  one  and  the  same;"*  to  which  may  be  added, 
that  all  the  modes  of  thought,  of  which  the  mind  is  one, 
"taken  together,  make  up  the  eternal  and  infinite  intellect  of 
God."  f  I  cannot,  therefore,  withhold  the  judgment  that  this 
vast  pile  of  thought  not  only  labors  under  incurable  defects  of 
method,  in  seeking  to  reach  facts  by  mathematical  definitions, 
and  these  often  assumptions  of  the  things  to  be  proved,  as  also 
in  drawing  out  inaccurately  its  chains  of  reasoning;  but  that, 
however  redeemed  by  intellectual  strength  and  high  purpose, 
it  leads  the  seeker  after  God  mournfully  astray,  and  substitutes 
a  fusion  with  an  unreal,  however  sublime,  idol  for  a  genuine 
worship  and  a  true  redemption. 

It  is,  however,  due  to  Spinoza,  and  also  to  Christianity,  to 
record  the  concessions  which  he  has  made  to  the  Gospel  history, 
and  to  its  great  subject,  as  full  as,  from  his  own  point  of  view, 
were  possible.  Not  only  is  there  the  remarkable  saying  pre- 
served by  Bayle,  in  his  "Dictionary,"  "  That  if  he  could  have  per- 
suaded himself  of  the  resurrection  of  Lazarus,  he  would  have 
broken  in  pieces  his  whole  system,  and  embraced  the  ordinary 
faith  of  Christians  ;"J  there  is  also,  with  a  profession  of  inabili- 
ty to  admit  the  incarnation,  the  testimony,  "  It  is  not  absolutely 
necessary  to  know  Christ  after  the  flesh,  but  we  must  think 
very  differently  of  that  eternal  Son  of  God,  I  mean  the  eternal 
wisdom  of  God,  which  has  manifested  itself  in  all  things,  and 
chiefly  in  the  human  mind,  and  most  of  all  in  Jesus  Christ.  .  .  . 
Because,  as  I  have  said,  this  wisdom  has  been  most  of  all  mani- 
fested by  Jesus  Christ,  therefore  his  disciples  have  proclaimed 
it,  so  far  as  by  him  revealed  to  them,  and  have  shown  that,  by 
that  Spirit  of  "Christ,  they  could  glory  above  the  rest."  §  "  The 

*  Spinoza,  Op.  ii.,  pp.  292,  293.          t  Ibid.,  p.  297 ;  prop.  xl.  Schol. 

J  Art.  "Spinoza,"  vol.  v.,  p.  17. 

§  Spinoza,  Op.,  i.,  p.  510.     Epistle  to  Oldenburg. 


UN* BELIEF   IN  THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY.        49 

highest  thing  that  Christ  said  of  himself  was  that  he  was  the 
temple  of  God ;  no  doubt,  because,  as  I  have  already  shown, 
God  manifested  himself  in  Christ  most  of  all,  whereof  John,  to 
express  it  more  effectually,  said,  'The  Word  was  made  flesh.'  "* 
But  for  the  irptirov  x//fD^oc  of  his  system,  and  the  fatal  entangle- 
ment of  mere  words,  "unity,"  "substance,"  "infinity,"  and 
others,  all  turned  into  an  abyss  of  darkness  by  scholastic  defini- 
tion and  mathematical  treatment,  this  great  mind  might,  through 
the  attractiveness  of  a  living  Christ,  have  exchanged  the  dreari- 
ness of  unbelief  for  Christianity. 

3.  Truly  great  is  the  contrast  between  a  gigantic  system- 
builder  like  Spinoza  and  a  universal  critic  like  Bayle,  the  type 
of  the  third  or  sceptical  school  of  unbelief,  to  which  we  now 
turn.  Bayle  (1647-1706)  does  his  work  almost  ere  the  century 
ends,  for  his  "  Dictionary  "  is  published  in  1697.  The  son  of  a 
Huguenot  minister  in  the  South  of  France,  mixed  up  with  their 
academic  teaching,  and  sharing  before  the  time,  in  Holland,  the 
disasters  of  their  exile,  Bayle  represents  a  quite  different  growth 
of  unbelief — that  of  a  worn-out  Calvinist,  whose  early  conversion 
to  Romanism,  and  return  from  it,  had,  as  in  the  later  case  of 
Gibbon,  exhausted  permanently  the  soil  of  faith  ;  and  who 
then  hung  on,  like  a  withered  leaf,  to  the  Reformation,  dis- 
trusting it,  but  hating  Romanism  still  more,  and  presenting  in 
his  wonderful  learning  and  acuteness,  but  total  if  not  mocking 
indifference,  the  spectacle  of  the  humanist  who,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  century,  had  been  so  friendly  to  Christianity,  now 
soured  and  alien.  The  only  good  things  which  he  carries  with 
him  outside  the  Christian  pale  are  his  love  of  letters,  his  love 
of  liberty — for  more,  perhaps,  than  any  great  literary  unbe- 
liever, more  certainly  than  Voltaire,  he  maintains  a  death-war 
with  Rome  as  the  enemy  of  freedom — and  also  the  perfect  im- 
partiality with  which  he  criticises  every  system,  religious  and 
philosophical,  Arminian  as  well  as  Calvinist,  Spinozist  as  strict- 
ly as  Cartesian,  and  does  not  spare  even  the  Manichrean  in 
those  celebrated  articles  on  that  school  that  have  led  to  the  im- 
pression (which,  however,  he  refused  to  accept)  that  he  was  se- 
civiily  inclined  to  that  theory.  We  do  not  err,  therefore,  in  re- 
ferring Bayle  to  the  sceptical  class — a  class  in  which  Hume,  and 
so  far  also  Gibbon,  were  his  greatest  successors.  Like  them,  he 

*  Spinoza,  Op.  i.,  pp.  515,  510.     Epistle  to  Oldenburg. 
3 


50         UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTUliV. 

fights  without  a  camp  and  a  country  of  his  own  to  defend ;  or 
his  only  camp  and  country  are  the  open  wild  of  speculation ; 
while  his  attacks  are  more  covert  than  theirs,  as  marked  the 
age.  These  consist  in  dwelling  on  the  dark  mysteries  of  evil, 
which,  however,  he  is  candid  enough  to  show,  press  equally 
upon  the  theist  of  every  school,  and  upon  the  heretical  Chris- 
tian as  much  as  the  orthodox ;  in  presenting  the  success  and 
influence  of  Mohammedanism  as  a  set-off  to  Christianity ;  and 
generally  in  laying  open  the  sores  and  infirmities  of  all  churches 
as  a  bar  to  the  higher  claims  of  any  ;  while  his  assaults  upon 
strictly  Christian  mysteries,  as  the  Trinity  and  Incarnation,  are 
more  rare  and  more  guarded.*  It  is  certain  that  the  influence 
of  Bayle  was  great  upon  the  century  that  followed,  in  which, 
next  to  English  Deism,  his  writings  furnished  the  chief  armory 
of  French  unbelief.  Still  his  cold  and  negative  spirit,  and  the 
entire  absence  of  that  passion  for  revolution  by  which  the  next 
century  was  so  distinguished,  must  have  limited  his  effect;  and 
the  doom  which  is  written  on  all  scepticism,  and  the  more  that 
it  approaches  to  pure  scepticism,  the  more  entirely — "  La  Na- 
ture confond  les  Pyrrhoniens" — must  have  thrown  him,  earlier 
than  otherwise  would  have  been  possible  for  so  great  a  writer, 
into  that  dark  background  where,  to  use  his  own  figure  of  him- 
self, he  sits  only  a  cloud-compeller,  presiding  over  mists  and 
shadows,  but  creating  no  strong  or  fruitful  empire.  After  all, 
the  pure  sceptic  proves  in  the  end  the  least  formidable  among 
the  antagonists  of  Christianity.  He  cannot  have  a  zeal  "  ac- 
cording to  knowledge" — for  to  him,  by  his  own  confession, 
knowledge  is  hopeless — and  a  zeal  without  it  is  so  inconsistent 
and  so  futile  that  it  must  ere  long  sink  to  the  level  of  a  philo- 
sophical or  literary  curiosity  rather  than  go  forth  as  a  living 
and  world-subduing  power. 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  D. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  51 


LECTURE  III. 

UNBELIEF   IN  THE.  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. -ENGLISH 
DEISM. 

Causes  of  Deism. — Inferiority  of  Deistical  Writers. — Blount,  a  Forerun- 
ner.—  Toland. —  His  Successive  Positions. —  Pantheisticon. —  Deism 
Proper. — Collins  and  Prophecy. — Woolston  and  Miracles. — Tindal 
and  Light  of  Nature. — Chubb  and  Christian  Morals. — Morgan  and 
Old  Testament. — Sceptics  :  Dodwell,  Bolingbroke,  Hume,  Gibbon. — 
Causes  of  Failure  of  Deism. 

IN  entering  upon  the  history  of  unbelief  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  it  seems  best  to  pursue  the  subject  according  to  its 
successive  development  in  the  three  great  countries  of  Europe 
where  it  had  the  largest  career — England,  France,  and  Germany. 
At  this  time,  also,  European  literature  parted,  and  the  features 
of  nationality  became  more  distinctive.  We  have  seen,  in  the 
works  of  Herbert  and  Hobbes,  England  taking  the  lead  in  this 
direction  ;  and  now,  to  a  large  extent,  the  battle  is  fought  out 
on  this  theatre.  It  is  impossible,  of  course,  in  this  lecture,  to 
write  the  history  of  English  Deism  ;  but  the  main  incidents  and 
features  may  be  sketched,  and  the  leading  purpose  of  these 
lectures  accomplished,  which  is  to  show  how  these  debates  look 
in  the  light  of  more  recent  opinion  and  controversy. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  go  into  an  inquiry  as  to  the  causes  of 
English  Deism.  The  great  cause,  as  always,  was  the  decay  of 
the  Christian  religion  itself.  The  fervent  interest  in  spiritual 
things  which  had  marked  the  middle  period  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  made  it,  with  all  its  faults,  the  greatest  hitherto  in 
English  history,  had,  through  manifold  failure  and  defeat,  been 
followed  by  the  reaction  of  the  Restoration  ;  and  the  visible 
and  notorious  denial  of  Christianity  in  life  and  practice  pre- 
pared  the  way  for  its  denial  in  opinion  and  theory.  There  was 
also  a  downward  tendency  in  Christian  doctrine,  both  in  the 
Church  of  England  and  among  the  Dissenters,  so  that  Latitudi- 
narianism,  Arianism,  and  Socinianism,  when  carried  a  sta^e  fur- 
ther, broke  out  in  infidelity.  The  success  of  natural  philoso- 
phy, through  the  impulse  given  by  Bacon  and  the  Royal  Soci- 


w  / 


• 

4xO^£«*i 


52          UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

ety,  probably  contributed,  with  other  causes,  to  predispose  the 
%  mind  against  the  supernatural;  while  the  philosophy  of  mind 
introduced  with  so  much  distinction  by  Locke  hardly  provided 
enough,  though  this  was  far  from  the  aim  of  its  author,  for 
truths  of  a  region  beyond  experience.  The  great  literary  pow- 
er which  was  about  to  break  out  in  the  Queen  Anne  period, 
though  not  of  the  highest  creative  order,  favored  agitation  and 
criticism  of  things  established.  The  right  of  discussion,  con- 
quered by  the  Revolution,  maintained  by  political  debate,  and 
tending  more  and  more  to  rid  itself  of  the  fetters  of  press  cen- 
sorship, supplied  here  the  only  arena  in  Europe  open  at  that 
time  to  such  a  controversy.  We  may  say  that  even  the  insti- 
tution of  an  Established  Church  to  some  extent  provoked  it.  ! 
It  was  a  mark  of  ambition  to  strike  deeper  than  all  distinctions 
.2,.  of  Cavalier  and  Roundhead,  of  Juror  and  Nonjuror,  of  Papist; 
and  Protestant,  which  had  hitherto  divided  the  national  life  ; 
the  defiance  of  great  dignitaries  was  more  an  attraction  than  a 
danger;  and  though  the  law  in  one  or  two  unhappy  cases 
broke  the  general  spirit  of  toleration,  this  rather  shed  around 
the  aggressive  side  something  of  the  halo  of  martyrdom. 

It  was  necessary  that  such  a  war  should  be  fought.  Noth- 
ing else  could  have  aroused  the  Christian  Church  to  a  sense  of 
/its  own  life  and  duty.  It  was,  no  doubt,  sad  that  so  many  able 
/and  educated  men  —  some  twelve  or  fifteen  in  all  —  should  assail 
all  the  foundations  of  Christian  faith,  and  produce  a  commo- 
tion lasting  for  half  a  century.  But  Christianity,  though  in  a 
very  low  and  unheroic  age,  proved  more  than  equal  to  this  de- 
bate. It  was  soon  found  that  the  weight  of  learning,  of  argu- 
mentative power,  and,  with  some  exceptions,  of  right  temper 
was  on  the  defensive  side.  The  right  of  possession  was  vindi- 
cated ;  and  the  old  gospel  —  in  new  forms  like  that  of  Method- 
ism —  began,  throughout  the  English-speaking  world,  a  career 
of  advance  and  conquest,  of  which  the  Dcistic  failure  may  well 
be  held  to  have  been  the  prelude.  It  is  significant  how  com- 
plete the  decay  of  Deistic  literature  has  been.  It  had  its  inge- 
nuity, its  acuteness,  its  controversial  skill.  But  it  has  wanted 
the  power  of  self-preservation.  With  the  exception  of  Hume 
and  Gibbon,  who  come  in  when  it  is  nearly  exhausted,  no  part 
of  it  is  reprinted,  and  much  is  so  forgotten  as  only  to  be  found 
in  our  great  libraries.*  Not  to  mention  other  Christian  apolo- 

*  I  have  to  express  my  great  obligations  to  J.  T.  Clark,  Esq.,  keeper  of 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  53 

gists  of  this  period,  each  great  in  some  special  combat,  the  an- 
nals of  Deism,  properly  so  called,  have  nothing  to  show  com- 
parable to  the  massive  learning  of  Bentley,  Lardner,  and  War- 
burton  ;  the  athletic  vigor  of  Clarke ;  the  grace,  subtlety,  and 
moral  enthusiasm  of  Berkeley ;  the  sagacity,  breadth,  and  eter- 
nal freshness  of  Butler.  The  Christian  writers,  no  doubt,  were 
more  numerous,  for  each  leading  work  of  the  Deistic  contro- 
versy called  forth  fifty  or  more  replies.  But  numbers  were 
here  another  sign  of  strength,  and  the  Deistic  writers  were  nu- 
merous enough  to  have  produced,  which  they  did  not,  some  one 
acknowledged  masterpiece. 

I  shall,  in  this  lecture,  follow  generally  the  order  of  time, 
only  I  shall  make  no  attempt  to  sketch  the  life  or  notice  the 
whole  works  of  each  writer,  or  specify  his  opponents  on  the 
Christian  side.  It  will  be  enough  to  connect  him  with  some 
leading  point  or  points  in  the  controversy,  to  estimate  his  posi- 
tion, and  to  show  how  it  has  been  affected  by  subsequent  dis- 
cussion and  criticism. 

I  have  to  begin,  then,  with  a  few  words  on  one  less  consider- 
able writer,  who  falls  a  little  before  the  eighteenth  century,  but 
who  belongs  to  the  Deistical  school,  and  represents  one  side  of 
it  hardly  brought  up  otherwise.  This  is  Charles  Blount,  a  gen- 
tleman of  family,  who  writes,  in  his  "  Aniraa  Mundi"and  other 
works,  in  the  same  strain  with  Herbert  on  the  heathen  relig- 
ions, but  who  introduces  the  French  style  of  light  and  piquant 
remark,  which  becomes  a  fashion  among  his  successors,  even  on 
the  gravest  topics.  His  works  published  during  his  lifetime 
are  protected  by  saving  clauses,  but  after  his  death  in  1693, 
which  was  self-inflicted,  and  occasioned  by  the  refusal  of  his 
deceased  wife's  sister  to  marry  him,  his  friend  Mr.  Charles  Gil- 
don  published  in  1695  a  collection  of  essays,  which  he  called 
"  Oracles  of  Reason,"  in  which  the  real  creed  of  Blount  be- 
comes apparent.  The  name  Deists  is  in  this  collection  applied 
to  the  body ;  their  tenets  are  stated  very  much  in  the  fashion 
of  Herbert,  but  with  more  stress  on  what  they  rejected,  such  as 
mediation  and  sacrifice ;  and  a  distinction  is  alluded  to  between 
mortal  and  immortal  Deists,  Blount  himself  belonging,  though 
with  some  hesitation,  to  the  latter.  It  is  not  necessary  to  quote 
the  free  and  irreverent  criticism  on  the  Old  Testament  to  show 

the  Advocates'  Library,  for  the  use  of  parts  of  this  literature  not  otherwise 
available. 


54         UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY. 

how  far  already  this  party  have  advanced ;  and  the  only  other 
point  of  interest  in  these  "Oracles"  is  the  way  in  which  the 
expectation  of  a  worldly  millennium,  which  has  been  urged  by 
Gibbon  and  Renan  as  accounting  for  the  success  of  Christian- 
ity, is  applied  to  the  same  purpose.  The  most  interesting 
thing,  however,  in  regard  to  Blount,  is  the  style  in  which,  be- 
yond all  who  followed  him,  he  has  tried  to  deal  with  the  argu- 
ment  drawn  from  the  person  and  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  This  is 

blank  in  the  English  eighteenth-century  literature  of  unbelief; 
but  Blount  had  already,  in  1680,  published  a  work  indirectly 
designed  to  abate  the  singularity  of  Christ's  history  by  com- 
paring him  with  the  magician  or  philosopher  of  the  end  of  the 
first  century,  Apollonius  of  Tyana.  This  had  been  done  be- 
fore, as  we  have  seen,  to  discredit  Christ  by  the  pagan  governor 
of  Bithynia,  Hierocles,  in  the  age  of  the  Emperor  Diocletian  ; 
and  Blount,  like  Hierocles,  fell  back  on  the  biography  of  Apol- 
lonius  that  had  been  written  a  century  and  a  half  after  his  death 
by  the  rhetorician  Philostratus  of  Lemnos.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence that  the  original  biographer  had  any  intention  to  attack 
Christianity  ;  but,  whether  or  not,  when  his  work  was  so  used  by 
Hierocles,  it  called  forth  a  complete  exposure  by  the  Church 
historian  Eusebius,  who  showed  how  fabulous  and  childish  the 
wonders  of  Apollonius  were.  Of  this  production  of  Eusebius 
we  may  suppose  Blount  to  have  been  entirely  ignorant  when 
he  sent  out  again  the  biography  of  Apollonius  translated — so 
far  as  the  first  two  books  went — with  notes,  designed  to  sug- 
gest the  parallel  which  they  durst  not  proclaim.  \Ve  thus  see, 
in  the  very  beginning  of  English  Deism,  how  feeble  and  hesi- 
tating was  its  attempt — and  it  never  came  to  much  more — to 
grapple  with  the  problem  of  the  alleged  supernatural  in  Christ, 
which  in  our  own  day  has  become,  with  however  little  of  suc- 
cess, the  main  effort  of  every  theory  of  unbelief. 

Our  next  writer,  John  Toland,  though  his  literary  career  be- 
gins in  1696,  brings  us  within  the  eighteenth  century;  and  his 
troubled  course,  which  ends  in  1722,  embraces  the  first  half  of 
the  Deistical  period.  He  passes  through  many  phases,  so  that' 
it  is  difficult  to  rank  him  under  our  threefold  rubric,  Deistic, 
Pantheistic,  or  Sceptical ;  but  as  he  is  the  only  one  of  all  the 
English  writers  we  have  to  name  who  in  any  form  professed 
pantheism,  we  may  put  him  in  this  list,  which  thus  begins  and 
ends.  Those  who  follow  for  a  long  time  are  Deists ;  the  Scep- 
tics close  the  scene. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  55 

I.  Toland,  who  thus  sums  up  English  Pantheism,  is  an  Irish 
scholar  of  fortune,  born  near  Deny  in  1670-1,  and  converted 
early  from  the  Church  of  Rome,  with  many  of  the  elements  of 
the  thinker  as  well  as  of  the  scholar  in  him.  He  studies  in 
Glasgow,  and  receives  his  degree  in  Edinburgh  on  the  day  be- 
fore the  battle  of  the  Boyne,  mingling  in  his  studies,  perhaps, 
with  some  of  those  Irishmen,  like  Francis  Mackemie,  who  were 
about  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  great  Presbyterian  Church 
in  the  solitudes  of  a  new  world.  He  is  attracted  rather  to  Lon- 
don, and  then,  under  Dissenting  patronage,  studies  two  years 
more  at  Leyden,  next  goes  to  Oxford,  probably  conforming  to 
the  Church  of  England;  and,  without  having  any  fixed  career 
before  him,  startles  the  world  in  1696  with  an  anonymous  little 
treatise,  "Christianity  not  Mysterious."  This  is  one  of  the 
writings  which  tremble  on  the  verge  of  paradox,  capable  of 
being  defended,  but  unwise  and  unsafe,  and  in  an  uneasy  time 
certain  to  produce  heats  and  agitations.  Toland  shows  with 
great  clearness  that,  in  so  far  as  anything  is  believed,  it  must 
be  so  far  understood ;  and  also  makes  out  that  "  mystery  "  in 
the  Bible  sense  is  not  truth  incomprehensible,  but  truth  not  yet 
revealed.  He  also  grants  an  element  of  incomprehensibility  in 
Christianity,  as  in  all -knowledge,  though  he  confuses  this  point 
by  denying  the  distinction  between  things  level  to  reason  and 
things  above  reason.  However,  he  is  far  from  denying  either 
revelation  or  miracle,  and  his  chief  offence  is  his  paradoxical 
style,  aggravated  by  the  suspicion — though  he  afterwards  pro- 
fessed himself  a  believer  in  the  Trinity  and  promised  in  another 
part  to  explain  all  the  so-called  Gospel  mysteries — that  he  made 
less  of  them  than  the  orthodox,  and  hence  took  so  lightly  their 
difficulty.  This  treatise  was  opposed,  among  others,  by  Stilling- 
flect,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  who  charged  Locke  with  having 
supplied  Toland  with  his  doctrine  of  knowledge,  and  thus  be- 
came involved  in  his  celebrated  controversy  with  that  philoso- 
pher as  to  certainty.  A  more  violent  treatment  was  measured 
out  to  it  by  the  Irish  Parliament  in  1797,  for  it  was  burned  by 
the  common  hangman,  and  its  author  had  to  escape  from  Dub- 
lin. Five  years  afterwards,  however,  when  condemned  by  the 
Lower  House  of  Convocation  in  London,  we  find  that,  through 
the  influence  of  Bishop  Burnet,  and  men  of  larger  toleration, 
who  did  not  approve  of  this  style  of  defending  Christianity, 
the  process  was  stopped,  though  Toland  had  meanwhile  rashly^ 
involved  himself  in  another  controversy.  This  arose  out  of 


56          UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Life  of  Milton,  in  which,  in  proclaiming  the  spuriousness  of 
"Eikon  Basilike,"  he  was  understood  to  level  some  insinuations 
against  the  genuineness  of  parts  of  the  New  Testament,  and  he 
with  some  difficulty  cleared  himself  in  a  work  entitled  u  Amyn- 
tor"  (Defender).  This  was  the  start  of  an  ever-recurrent  de- 
bate, all  through  the  Deistical  warfare,  as  to  the  genuineness 
and  integrity  of  books  of  the  canon,  till  this  was  closed  by  the 
reat  work  of  Lardner,  tinished  in  1755,  on  the  "  Credibility  of 
the  Gospel  History." 

The  unquiet  spirit  of  Toland  led  him  to  wander  over  Europe 
seeking  either  a  literary  or  political  career.  A  volume  which 
he  published  in  1704  professes  to  be  mainly  letters  to  Serena, 
a  name  for  the  Queen  of  Prussia,  Sophie  Charlotte,  a  member 
of  the  Hanoverian  family,  and  the  same  for  whom  Leibnitz 
wrote  his  "Theodicee."  Lechler  doubts  whether  these  letters 
ever  passed,  or  whether  the  whole  account  is  not  due  to  To- 
land's  vanity,  as  there  are  no  German  vouchers.*  But,  be  this 
as  it  may,  they  prove  that  Toland  was  still  comparatively  or- 
thodox, though  his  Christian  sympathies  very  little  appear. 
The  third  letter,  on  the  origin  of  idolatry,  is  far  from  extenuat- 
ing paganism  in  the  strain  of  Herbert  or  Blount ;  and  a  fourth 
letter  to  a  gentleman  in  Holland  expressly  opposes  the  system 
of  Spinoza,  and  acutely  argues  that  he  had  not  provided  for 
motion  in  his  extended"  substance,  though,  in  a  following  letter. 
Toland  himself  arbitrarily  solves  the  difficulty  by  making  mo- 
tion an  essential  property  of  matter.  In  a  work  published  in 
1709,  and  dedicated  to  Anthony  Collins,  under  the  title  of 
"Adeisidaemon"  (Non-superstitious),  Toland  is  shown  to  have  so 
far  given  up  his  faith  in  the  Old  Testament  as  to  prefer  the  ac- 
count of  Strabo,  that  the  Israelites  were  Egyptians,  to  that 
commonly  traced  to  Moses,  arguing  that  Moses  was  little  bet- 
ter than  an  Egyptian  priest  or  king,  in  whose  name,  however, 
later  legislation  found  currency  and  acceptance.  In  an  equally 
eccentric  work,  entitled  "  Nazarenus,"  and  published  in  171 8,  an 
opposite  view  is  maintained ;  and  it  is  held  that  not  only  was 
it  the  doctrine  of  the  Jewish  Christians  that  their  law  was 
eternally  binding,  but  that  in  this  they  were  right,  and  that, 


*  Lechler,  "Gescliichte  des  englischen  Peismus,"  1841,  pp.  463,  464 
(Appendix).  In  quoting  Lechler,  it  is  impossible  not  to  express  admirn- 
tion  of  the  research,  impartiality,  and  general  accuracy  of  this  work,  which 
is  still,  after  forty  years,  the  best  on  the  subject. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  57 

Paul  had  secured  a  kind  of  dispensation  to  the  Gentiles  on  the 
easier  terms  of  obeying  the  so-called  Noachic  precepts  agreed 
upon  in  the  Council  of  Jerusalem.  Here  Toland,  who  professes 
his  adherence  to  this  original  Christianity,  does  not  agree  with 
the  Tubingen  school  of  our  own  days,  for  he  regards  the  Naz- 
arenes  as  only  wishing  to  keep  their  law  for  themselves;  and 
hence  he  does  not  expect,  like  Baur,  to  find,  in  a  life-and-death 
conflict  of  Jewish  and  Gentile  Christians,  the  key  to  the  pro- 
duction of  the  Gospels,  and  to  so  much  besides  in  early  Chris- 
tianity. 

The  last  two  works  which  Toland  published  fall  two  years  ^J 
before  his  death  (1720).  It  is  not  possible,  by  any  supposition,  ' 
to  reconcile  them  to  each  other.  The  one  is  a  collection  of 
four  treatises,  hence  called  "Tetradymus,"  the  first  of  which  con- 
tains the  most  paradoxical  of  all  his  opinions,  that  the  pillar  of 
cloud  and  fire  was  an  ordinary  watch-tire,  hoisted  up  on  a  pole, 
the  angel  who  thus  guided  the  Israelites  a  man,  and  that  man 
Hobab,  the  relative  of  Moses.  Though  Toland  here  sinks  to 
the  lowest  naturalism,  he  still,  in  the  same  volume,  professes 
his  belief  in  miracles,*  and  repels  the  charge  of  Socinianism,t 
and  also  uses  the  words  in  regard  to  Spinoza :  "  I  differ  from 
Spinoza  in  the  very  groundwork  of  his  philosophy."  J  Yet  in 
the  same  year  he  sent  out  an  anonymous  work  in  Latin  ("  Pan- 
theisticon  "),  professing  to  be  an  account  of  a  pantheistic  club  or 
secret  society  dispersed  over  Europe,  with  a  description  of  their 
opinions  and  symposial  usages,  and  a  formulary  for  the  latter, 
which  is  a  kind  of  parody  of  Christian  liturgies.  The  work  is 
*not  meant  to  be  taken  as  a  serious  report  of  an  existing  frater- 
nity or  ritual ;  but  it  shows  the  sympathies  of  its  author,  whose  >L 
identity  is  also  manifested  by  the  looseness  of  his  philosophical 
groundwork,  which  is  not  a  coherent  scheme,  like  that  of  Spi- 
noza, but  a  sketch  of  nature  as  a  universal  force  or  principle  in 
the  style  of  the  old  cosmogonies,  garnished  with  extracts  from 
ancient  poets  and  moralists,  and  with  denunciations  of  priests 
and  superstitions.  It  is  sad  to  see  a  writer  of  such  capacity 
end  so  unhappily ;  and  the  utter  contradiction  between  the  two 
last  works  is  explained  by  the  fact  (justified  it  cannot  be)  that 
in  a  formal  essay  in  the  earlier  volume  ("  Olidophorus  "),  and  re- 
peated utterances  in  the  "  Pantheisticon,"  liberty  is  claimed  to 
hold  and  teach  opposite  doctrines,  "  ut  aliud  sit  in  pectore  et 

*  "  Hodegus,"  p.  5.        t  "  Mangonentes,"  p.  190.        %  Ibid.,  p.  185. 

3* 


58         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

privato  consessu,  aliud  in  foro  et  publica  condone."*  "How 
hard  it  is  to  come  at  truth  yourself,  and  how  dangerous  a  thing 
to  publish  it  to  others  !"f 

II.  We  now  come  to  the  group  of  Deists  proper ;  and  though 
there  is  not  a  perfectly  logical  division  supplied  by  the  order 
of  time,  it  answers  sufficiently  well,  asdk>llins  headsjthe  argu- 
ment against  prophecy,  Woolston  that  against  miracles./Tindal 
that  against  the  addition  to  the  light  of  nature,  Shaltesbury 
and  Chubb  that  against  the  Christian  morality,  and  Morgan 
that  against  the  Old  Testament.  These  writers  do  not,  indeed, 
keep  closely  to  their  text ;  but  the  whole  controversy,  in  so  far 
as  it  did  not  degenerate  into  scepticism,  is  exhausted  under 
these  summaries. 

We  begin,  then,  with  Anthony  Collins,  and  his  part  in  the 
argument  concerning  prophecy.  Collins  (1676-1729),  who 
was  an  Essex  squire,  and  a  friend  and  disciple  of  Locke,  is 
connected  with  other  controversies  on  which  we  need  not  here 
touch,  as  opposing  Dr.  Samuel  Clarke,  both  on  the  immaterial- 
ity of  the  soul  as  an  argument  for  its  immortality,  and  on  his 
views  of  liberty  of  will.  He  had  also,  in  1713,  acquired  great 
notoriety  by  a  "  Discourse  on  Freethinking,  occasioned  by  the 
Rise  and  Growth  of  a  Sect  called  Freethinkers,"  which  was  pub- 
lished, like  all  his  works,  anonymously,  and  designed  to  be  a 
rallying -cry  or  manifesto  of  the  party  whose  name  it  bore. 
This  work  has  no  legitimate  or  scientific  method,  as  it  does 
not  define  the  freedom  of  which  it  speaks,  or  state  who  denies 
it,  but  is  a  continued  attack  on  received  opinions  as  to  Chris* 
tianity,  and  especially  as  by  disagreements  as  to  its  doctrines 
and  records  making  such  freedom  of  thinking  necessary  ;  while, 
at  the  same  time,  a  miscellaneous  list  of  authorities  is  given — 
such  as  Socrates,  Solomon,  Epicurus,  Hobbes,  and  Tillotson— 
who  had  all  recommended  freethinking  by  precept  and  exam- 
ple. This  work,  at  best,  has  the  cleverness  of  a  squib,  and  is 
now  remembered  chiefly  by  the  masterly  reply  of  Bentley,  in 
which  that  great  writer  founds  upon  the  loose  reasoning  and 
inaccurate  scholarship  of  Collins  the  most  remarkable  and  va- 
ried structure  of  argument  and  learning,  relieved  by  a  wit — 
though  dashed  also  with  controversial  abuse  —  peculiarly  his 

*  "Pantheisticon,"p.  80. 
t  "Tetradymus,"p.  100. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  59 

own.*  There  is  here  a  penetrating  insight  into  the  supersti- 
tion and  bigotry  of  the  ancient  world,  passed  off  by  Collins  as 
freethinking ;  and  on  all  questions  as  to  the  state  and  author- 
ity of  the  sacred  books  the  consummate  knowledge  of  Bent- 
ley  is  apparent.  Especially  in  regard  to  the  alarm  created  by 
various  readings,  the  admirable  statements  in  No.  xxxii.,  prov- 
ing that  the  more  numerous  the  readings  the  purer  is  the  text, 
have  had  great  effect  in  excluding  this  once  common  objection. 
Collins  looks  less  able  and  plausible  after  such  a  handling  than 
he  really  was;  and  his  more  important  attack  on  prophecy 
which  followed,  after  eleven  years,  in  1724,  displays  the  re- 
sources of  no  common  controversialist.  His  book  was  entitled 
"A  Discourse  of  the  Grounds  and  Reasons  of  the  Christian 
Religion,"  and  was  professedly  addressed  to  a  divine  of  North 
Britain,  anxious,  in  his  remote  corner,  to  be  informed  of  the 
controversies  which  shook  the  metropolis.  This  introduces 
the  paradox  of  an  eccentric  theologian  of  great  notoriety  in 
those  days,  the  Rev.  William  Whiston,  of  whose  views  in  re- 
gard to  prophecy  Collins  takes  very  dexterous  advantage. 
Whiston  contended  zealously  that  all  prophecy  was  strictly 
literal,  but  had  also  adopted  a  view  which  made  its  fulfilment, 
as  alleged  in  the  New  Testament,  incapable  of  proof,  for  he 
held  that  the  Old  -  Testament  Scriptures  had  been  hopelessly 
corrupted  by  the  Jews.  Collins  eagerly  seizes  this  eccentricity 
of  a  weak-minded  theologian  to  start  his  own  thesis,  and,  while 
he  contends,  against  Wliiston,  that  the  Old  Testament  has 
never  been  thus  corrupted,  or  cannot  now  be  restored,  simply 
that  he  may  preserve  the  discord  between  it  and  the  New,  he 
also  denounces  his  literalism  as  a  revolt  from  the  universal 
Church,  which  had  always  held  prophecy  to  be  fulfilled  only 

*  The  work  of  Bentley  appeared  in  1713,  under  the  pseudonym  of 
Phileleutherus  Lipsiensis,  the  author  wearing  the  mask  of  a  Lutheran 
clergyman,  and  is  dedicated  to  Dr.  Hare,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Chichester, 
with  whom  Bentley  was  still  on  a  friendly  footing.  It  appeared  in  three 
parts — the  first  extending  to  Remark  XXXIII. ;  the  second  to  Remark 
LIU. ;  and  the  third,  which  has  no  title-page,  and  only  a  fly-leaf  contain- 
ing a  list  of  Bentley's  and  other  Latin  works,  "printed  for  and  sold  by 
Cornelius  Crownfield,  at  the  University  Press  in  Cambridge,"  has  only 
Remark  LIV.,  which,  after  sixteen  pages,  breaks  off  in  the  middle.  In 
my  copy,  which  is  of  1718,  there  are  inserted,  by  a  hand  unknown  to  me, 
these  words,  on  the  blank  leaf  after  p.  10,  "This  is  the  whole  of  what  Dr. 
Jieniley  order'd  to  be  printed,  as  Mr.  Oownfield  told  me."  A  page  or 
two  more  were  recovered  and  acjded  by  his  nephew  in  1743. 


60         UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTUKY. 

in  a  mystical  and  allegorical  sense.  This  wholly  inaccurate 
account  of  Christian  opinion  he  supports  by  one-sided  cita- 
tions; and  as  examples  of  all  prophecy  he  produces  five  texts, 
among  others  that  of  the  Virgin  conceiving  a  son,  and  the 
words  of  Hosea, "  I  called  my  Son  out  of  Egypt "  (xi.  1 ),  which 
he  ought  to  have  acknowledged  had  been  generally  held  by 
Christian  writers  to  be  difficult  of  interpretation,  and  explicable 
only  by  some  hypothesis  not  usually  employed  in  regard  to 
prophecy.  Collins,  however,  conceals  the  fact  that  the  great 
body  of  prophecies  have  been  urged  as  literal,  or,  if  typical, 
still  with  a  recognizable  fulfilment,  and  not  with  such  mere 
accommodation  as  was  no  prophecy  in  the  proper  sense  at  all ; 
and  hence,  though  he  does  not  expressly  say  so,  he  constantly 
suggests  it,  that  the  whole  argument  from  prophecy,  resting 
upon  allegories  that  predict  nothing,  falls  to  the  ground.  Of 
the  many  able  replies  to  this  work  I  notice  only  the  most  dis- 
tinguished, that  of  Dr.  Edward  Chandler,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Durham,  whose  "Defence  of  Christianity,"  published  in  1725, 
went  over  the  whole  ground  with  remarkable  Biblical  and  Rab- 
binical learning,  and,  leaving  Winston  to  the  neglect  which  lie 
merited,  combated  the  positions  of  Collins.  He  began  by  es- 
tablishing the  universal  expectation  of  a  Messiah — for  lie  lim- 
ited the  argument  to  Messianic  prediction — and  then  adduced 
twelve  Messianic  prophecies,  which,  he  contended,  were  literal, 
e.  g.,  the  riding  of  Christ  into  Jerusalem,  his  birth  at  Bethle- 
hem, and  the  fifty -third  of  Isaiah.  He  then  added  four,  as 
examples  of  typical  prophecies,  such  as  of  Christ  under  the 
figures  of  Solomon,  of  David,  of  Joshua  the  high-priest,  and  of 
Zerubbabel.  The  five  difficult  passages,  which  alone  Collins 
had  indicated,  and  in  regard  to  some  of  which  the  bishop  held 
that  there  might  be  some  latitude  in  regard  to  the  sense  of  the 
formula  "  It  is  fulfilled,"  close  the  series.  In  his  work  the 
bishop,  who  is  strong  in  the  handling  of  general  principles  as 
well  as  questions  of  scholarship,  urges  a  point  ably  raised  some 
half-century  before  by  Limborch,  in  his  Arnica  Collatio  with 
the  Jew  Orobio,  that  a  divine  messenger,  as  inspired,  was  en- 
titled  to  brino;  deeper  senses  out  of  prophecy  than  wrere  at  first 
visible  in  it ;  and  that  our  Saviour  and  his  apostles,  as  accred- 
ited by  miracle,  might  thus,  in  addition  to  what  was  plain  in 
the  fulfilment  of  prophecy  to  the  unbeliever,  also  enlarge  the 
knowledge  of  the  Christian.  There  must  be  enough  to  ac- 
credit Jesus,  as  he  himself  and  the  whole  Christian  Church 


ENGLISH   DEISM.  61 

maintained,  but  everything  called  prophecy  did  not  need  to  be 
an  undeniable  credential,  and  its  parts  might  be  of  unequal 
clearness. 

Of  his  numerous  and  able  antagonists,  some  of  whom  took 
up  divergent  positions,  Chandler  was  the  only  one  to  whom 
Collins  replied ;  and  this  he  did  in  a  very  elaborate  work,  pub- 
lished in  1727,  "The  Scheme  of  Literal  Prophecy  Considered." 
Here,  however,  he  did  not  admit  that  the  controversy  as  it 
stood  was  very  different  from  what  he  had  represented  at  the 
outset,  but  did  his  best  to  fight  through  the  hard  battle  that 
was  before  him.  He  admits  that  "a  prophecy  literally  fulfil-^ 
led  is  a  real  miracle,  and  that  one  such  produced,  to  which  no 
exceptions  could  justly  be  made,  would  go  a  great  way  in  con- 
vincing all  reasonable  men."  *  He  fails,  however,  to  see  the 
force  of  convergent  evidence  as  to  true  fulfilment ;  and  because 
he  can  oppose  something,  from  want  of  irrefragable  proof,  or 
of  concurrence  among  Jews  or  Christians,  to  every  separate 
text,  the  whole  goes  for  nothing. 

An  interesting  passage  in  this  controversy  is  the  denial  by  ^C^ 
Collins  of  the  Book  of  Daniel  and  its  alleged  Messianic  proph- 
ecies, his  arguments  being  a  tolerably  full  anticipation  of  the 
Maccabean  theory  in  its  present  form  ;  while  Chandler's  second 
work,  " A  Vindication  of  the  Defence  of  Christianity"  (1728), 
contains  a  still  abler  reply.  But  by  far  the  most  remarkable 
thing  in  this  debate,  and  that  which  makes  it  a  landmark  in 
the  history  of  unbelief,  is  the  fate  which  has  overtaken  Col- 
lins's  denial  of  the  early  and  long-continued  expectation  of  a  V 
Messiah  by  the  Jews.  This  point  against  Chandler  he  labors 
with  the  greatest  earnestness,  contending  that  no  trace  of  such 
expectation  is  found  till  within  a  few  years  before  Jesus  of 
Nazareth ;  and  then  only  to  a  partial  extent,  and  as  the  result 
of  Roman  oppression,  which  reflected  in  the  longed-for  Deliv- 
erer only  the  features  of  a  victorious  monarch.  This  position 
is  completely  reversed  by  Strauss,  who  does  not  name  Collins, 
but  can  only  build  his  mythical  theory  on  the  ruins  of  this 
scheme.  Strauss  requires  for  the  currency  of  the  mythical 
theory,  both  as  to  what  Jesus  was  and  what  Christian  portrait- 
ure made  him,  a  long  and  ancient  career  of  Jewish  Messianic 
expectation,  and  expectation  not  of  a  Conqueror  only,  but  of 
a  Teacher  and  Spiritual  Head ;  and  hence,  without  granting 

*  "Scheme  of  Lit.  Prophecy,"  j>.  275. 


62         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

prediction,  he  grants  anticipation  by  Isaiah  and  later  prophets, 
in  successive  representations,  more  or  less  agreeing  with  each 
other,  and  propagating  themselves  in  that  extra -Scriptural 
Jewish  literature  to  which,  as  well  as  to  the  Old  Testament, 
Chandler  appealed.  Much  of  Collins  is  thus  by  Strauss  su- 
perseded ;  and  though  the  non-Christian  students  of  Old-Tes- 
tament prophecy  have  thus  greatly  increased  their  own  respon- 
sibilities, they  have  only  yielded  to  the  stress  of  evidence  in 
consenting  to  think  of  Christianity  and  its  Author  as  so  much 
more  wonderful  than  the  eighteenth  century  allowed,  and  as 
y  preceded  by  such  an  aurora  of  moral  longing  and  anticipation 
as  belongs  to  nothing  else  in  human  history.* 

The  discussion  in  regard  to  miracles,  which  immediately  fol- 
lowed that  as  to  prophecy,  and  made,  in  one  sense,  the  most 
flagrant  and  noted  passage  of  the  Deistical  controversy,  was 
unhappily  connected  with  a  leader  who  wanted  every  quality 
that  could  give  it  a  solid  and  a  permanent  interest,  being  either 
so  blunted  in  his  moral  perceptions,  or,  what  is  more  probable, 
>C_  (so  near  to  madness  in  his  mental  condition,  and  in  any  case  so 
destitute  of  judgment  and  learning,  that  the  deniers  of  Christi- 
anity in  our  day  would  as  little  consent  to  be  represented  by 
him  as  his  antagonists.  This  was  Thomas  Woolston  (1667- 
1733),  formerly  a  fellow  of  Sidney  College,  Cambridge,  who 
had  published  various  writings  in  defence  of  the  allegorical 
sense  of  Scripture,  after  the  style  of  Origen,  but  who  had 
alienated  opinion  from  himself  by  his  bitter  denunciations  of 
the  clergy  as  slaves  of  the  letter,  and  had  at  length,  in  1721, 
been  deprived  of  his  fellowship  for  a  eulogy  on  the  Quakers, 
as  nearer  the  primitive  Church  than  any  body  in  England. 
Woolston  took  up  the  controversy  on  prophecy  as  an  umpire 
between  Collins  and  his  opponents.  His  first  and  most  con- 
siderable work  in  it  is  entitled  "  The  Moderator  between  an 
Infidel  and  an  Apostate  "  (1725)— the  infidel  being  Collins,  and 
the  apostate  the  modern  Anglican  clergy,  who  had  fallen  away 
from  the  allegorical  method  of  the  fathers,  and  become  priests 
of  the  letter.  The  professed  impartiality  of  the  moderatorship 
is  ill-maintained,  as  every  word  he  speaks  in  the  controversy  is 

*  Strauss  concedes  early  and  various  anticipations  of  a  Messiah  ("  Leben 
Jesu,"  p.  170;  1864  edition) ;  also  that  Jesus  formed  himself  after  these 
models,  not  as  a  conqueror,  but  a  teacher ;  and,  in  terms  of  such  long- 
current  oracles  as  Isa.  liii.,  anticipated  his  own  sufferings  and  death,  even 
as  a  ransom  for  sin  (pp.  233,  234). 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  63 

on  the  side  of  Collins  ;  and  he  only  professes  to  differ  from  him 
by  retaining  a  faith  in  allegory,  which  made  him  see  a  merely 
literal  Christianity  perish,  not  only  with  indifference,  but  with 
joy.  As  the  debate  in  regard  to  prophecy  had  become  mixed 
up  with  that  in  regard  to  miracle,  so  Woolston  now  formally 
raises  this  latter,  and  seeks  to  preclude  the  orthodox  from  find- 
ing any  refuge  in  the  one  argument  to  help  the  other.  This 
occasions  his  six  successive  "  Discourses  on  the  Miracles  of  our 
Saviour,"  published  from  1727  to  1729,  with  two  "Defences" 
in  1729  and  1730.  In  the  first  four  discourses  our  Lord's  other 
miracles  are  considered  ;  in  the  fifth  his  three  raisings ;  in  the 
sixth  his  own  resurrection.  In  all  these  the  aim  of  the  writer 
is,  without  questioning  the  letter  of  the  Gospels,  to  assail  the 
genuineness  of  the  miracle  as  incredible  and  absurd,  and  then 
to  fall  back  on  the  mystical  meaning  salving  the  whole,  accord- 
ing to  the  principle  laid  down  in  the  words  "'The  history  of 
Jesus'  life,  as  recorded  in  the  Evangelists,  is  an  emblematical 
representation  of  his  spiritual  life  in  the  soul  of  man,  and  his 
miracles  are  figures  of  his  mysterious  operations.  The  four 
Gospels  are  in  no  part  a  literal  story,  but  a  system  of  mystical 
philosophy  or  theology."*  Almost  all  writers  have  allowed 
the  wild  and  reckless  manner  in  which  Woolston  has  criticised 
the  letter  of  the  miracles  and  the  objects  dearest  to  Christian 
faith,  and  especially  his  bringing-in  of  a  Jewish  rabbi  (as  Cel- 
sus  had  done)  to  utter  his  strongest  suggestions  of  imposture 
or  folly,  as  in  the  case  of  the  miracle  at  Cana,  the  resurrection 
of  Lazarus,  and  our  Lord's  own  resurrection,  when  he  was  re- 
strained from  speaking  in  his  own  person  by  popular  reverence 
or  fear  of  legal  consequences.  Simply  as  examples  of  this  pecul- 
iar style,  I  may  mention  that  he  speaks  of  the  story  of  Jairus's 
daughter,  and  of  the  widow  of  Nain's  son,  as  "  Gulliverian  tales 
of  persons  and  things  ;"f  of  the  narrative  of  Lazarus  as  so 
"  brimful  of  absurdities  that  if  the  letter  alone  is  to  be  regard- 
ed, St.  John,  who  was  then  above  a  hundred  when  he  wrote  it, 
had  lived  beyond  his  reason  and  senses ;"  J  and  once  more,  as  a 
specimen  of  the  rabbi's  style,  that  the  three  first  Evangelists 
"confined  their  narratives  to  Jesus'  less  juggling  tricks." §  It 
has  been  made  a  question  how  far  Woolston  was  serious  in 
holding  by  any  allegorical  residuum  of  the  miraculous  history. 

*  First  Discourse,  p.  65.       t  Fifth  Discourse,  p.  1 7.       t  Ibid.,  p.  38. 
I  §  Ibid.,  p.  52. 


64         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

So  constantly  and  solemnly  does  he  assert  his  sincerity  as  a 
Christian  on  this  ground,  and  so  bitterly  does  he  complain  of 
the  bishops  and  others  for  refusing  him  any  credit,  that  I  do 
not  wonder  that  Lechler,  without  arguing  the  question,  has  been 
disposed  to  take  him  at  his  word.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
Archbishop  Trench  and  Strauss  look  on  his  appeals  to  a  deeper 
spirit  in  the  Gospels  as  a  mere  blind  ;  and  I  wish  I  could  resist 
the  tendency  to  agree  with  them,  when  I  think  how  he  satirizes 
in  some  places  that  very  allegorizing  strain  of  the  fathers  of 
which  he  professes  to  be  the  great  restorer;*  how  he  leaves 
nothing  in  Christ's  earthly  history  that  can  be  connected  with 
his  alleged  future  coming  as  the  true  Messiah — that  is,  "  the 
Logos  of  the  law;"f  in  other  words,  the  personified  reason 
which  is  one  day  to  enlighten  the  world  ;  and  how  he  separates 
Christ  altogether  from  any  special  mission  in  the  world,  since 
all  that  he  admits  is  that  the  doctrine  he  and  his  disciples 
taught  was,  "  for  the  most  part  of  it,  good,  useful,  and  popular, 
being  no  other  than  the  law  and  religion  of  nature."!  How 
little  Woolston  was  entitled,  on  such  a  ground,  to  resent  the 
title  of  Christian  being  denied  him,  or  to  profess  respect  for  an 
allegorical  meaning  in  the  record  of  Christ's  life  while  explod- 
ing and  ridiculing  its  literal  facts,  I  think  must  be  apparent. 
Another  circumstance,  as  has  been  agreed  by  all,  shows  how 
little  of  allegory  he  could  have  retained,  as  the  one  subject 
which  he  brings  out  of  every  miracle  is  the  lifting-up  of  the 
mere  doctrine  of  natural  religion,  from  disease  or  death  in  the 
letter,  to  healing  and  resurrection  in  the  spirit.  The  wonder 
of  these  discourses  is  the  union  of  so  much  rude  and  violent 
criticism  with  so  much  strained  and  monotonous  allegory  ;  and 
another  wonder  is  the  immense  sensation  they  produced,  though 
this  is  explicable  by  their  rough  license,  and  the  scandal  of  an 
attack  upon  the  established  faith.  Their  rhapsodical  character, 
however,  limited  the  value  of  the  discussions  on  the  Christian 
side  to  which  they  gave  rise.  Even  a  classic  work  like  Sher- 
lock's "Trial  of  the  Witnesses"  could  hardly  live,  with  the 
monstrous  legal  case  in  the  heart  of  it,  raised  by  Woolston, 
that  the  chief  priests  and  the  disciples  were  parties  in  a  formal 
contract  to  the  sealing-up  of  the  sepulchre,  but  that  the  latter 
broke  the  compact  and  stole  the  body. 

*  "Moderator, "pp.  100,  132. 

t  Supplement  to  "  Moderator,"  p.  54.  f  Sixth  Discourse,  p.  37. 


ENGLISH   DEISM.  65 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  authorities  in  Church  and  •y 
State  should  have  proceeded  against  Woolston  for  blasphemy. 
He  was  prosecuted  in  1729  by  the  Attorney-General  before  the 
Kind's  Bench,  and  condemned  to  a  fine  of  £100  and  a  year's 
imprisonment ;  and  as  he  could  not  pay  the  fine,  he  was  allowed 
apparently  to  purchase  the  liberty  of  the  rules  of  the  King's 
Bench,  where  he  remained  till  his  death,  in  1733.  It  has  been 
common  to  say  that  be  died  in  prison.  Voltaire,  who  was  in 
England  shortly  before  his  trial,  says  in  the  article  "  Miracles," 
in  iiis  "Dictionary,"  that  he  died  in  his  own  house.  I  have  been 
led,  from  inquiry  into  this  point,  to  believe  that  each  statement 
is  true.  He  was  so  far  in  restraint;  but  the  liberties  of  the 
prison  were  very  extensive,  so  that  he  had  a  house  of  his  own. 
Singularly  enough,  a  point  was  thus  illustrated  which,  in  regard 
to  the  facts  of  Scripture,  he  had  been  slow  to  accept :  that  dis-  >. 
cord  in  narratives  like  that  of  the  Resurrection  may  look  very 
like  contradiction,  yet  admit  of  reasonable  harmony.* 

With  its  next  act,  the  Deistic  conflict  returned  to  a  more 
quiet  and  steady  movement;  and  it  probably  somewhat  re- 
trieved itself  by  the  aspect  of  philosophical  discussion,  though 
it  failed  to  find  an  advocate  who  was  in  the  public  eye  un-  ' 
exceptionable.  Matthew  Tindal  (1656-1733)  had  been  a  fel- 
low of  All-Souls,  Oxford,  and  had,  in  the  reign  of  James  II.,  in  vj 
1685,  gone  over  to  Popery,  which  he  had,  however,  renounced 
before  the  Revolution,  his  more  recent  antagonism  to  Rome  be- 
ing proved  by  his  work  in  1706,  "The  Rights  of  the  Christian 
Church  asserted  against  the  Romish  and  all  other  Priests." 
But  the  recoil,  as  in  other  cases,  had  proceeded  too  far ;  and  in 
1730,  in  his  seventy -fourth  year,  his  "Christianity  as  Old  as  the 
Creation,"  a  work  published  without  his  name,  and  never  fin- 
ished, revealed  how  deeply  and  long  meditated  had  been  this 
protest  against  all  positive  religion.  This  book,  to  my  mind, 
has  many  and  grievous  faults.  Being  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue 
between  A  and  B,  it  commits  the  Christian  cause  to  one  of  the 
greatest  weaklings  known  in  controversy.  It  is  radically  am- 
biguous. It  has  endless  repetitions,  is  full  of  the  fallacy  of 
citation,  and  is  crowded  with  particular  objections  to  the  Old 
Testament  and  New  that  do  not  belong  to  its  main  argument, 
holding  right  on,  as  in  the  case  of  the  various  readings,  as  if 
nothing  had  ever  been  said  on  the  other  side.  But  with  all 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  E. 


66         UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

these  drawbacks  it  compels  the  breaking -up  of  new  ground 
bearing  on  the  relation  of  natural  religion  (so-called)  to  re- 
vealed. Christianity  is  as  old  as  the  creation  only  if  it  re-echoes 
Deism  ;  but  if  it  add  anything  to  natural  religion,  it  is  an  upstart 
and  impostor.  Out  of  this  challenge  arose  the  most  fruitful 
debate  of  the  Deistic  period,  bringing  forth,  with  others,  the 
admirable  works  of  Conybeare,  Foster,  and  Lcland,  and  supply- 
ing probably  more  matter  to  Butler  than  any  other  of  the  un- 
named sources  of  the  "  Analogy."  The  ground  of  Tindal  was 
really  the  key  of  the  Deistic  position  ;  and  hence,  with  his  de- 
feat, the  struggle  became  less  close  and  stubborn. 

Discounting  the  numberless  particular  objections  of  Tindal 
to  the  evidence  or  substance  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
the  great  point,  which  he  urges  with  something  like  novelty,  is 
the  inadmissibility  of  revelation  on  grounds  which  all  run  up 
to  two — that  the  Law  or  Light  of  Nature  precludes  its  neces- 
sity, and  excludes  its  proof.  Tindal  argued  against  the  neces- 
sity or  even  admissibility  of  revelation,  because  the  law  of  nat- 
ure grounded  in  the  being  of  God  and  his  relation  to  his  creat- 
ures could  not  be  superseded,  but  must,  from  the  perfection  of 
God  and  his  love  to  his  creatures,  be  as  perfect  at  one  time  as 
at  any  other ;  and  he  also  argued  against  the  possibility  of  in- 
troducing any  revelation  save  by  building  all  its  truths  on  the 
self-evident  principles  of  reason,  and  making  this  agreement  its 
evidence,  in  which  case  it  was  no  revelation  in  the  proper  sense 
of  the  term.  Nothing  can  be  more  admirable  than  the  reason- 
ing of  Dr.  Conybeare  in  reply  to  Tindal.*  He  shows  that  he 
has  confounded  the  law  of  nature,  which  is  without  man,  with 
the  light  of  nature  which  is  within  him,  and  which  alone  can  be 
called  "  natural  religion  ;"  that  this  being  in  man  does  not  par- 
take the  immutability  which  belongs  to  God,  and  can  only  be 
perfect  in  a  relative  sense ;  and  that  thus  there  is  room  for  ad- 
dition to  the  clearness  of  our  knowledge  of  the  law  of  nature ; 
as  to  its  sanctions  (e.  g.,  a  future  life),  as  to  its  extent,  and  as  to 
our  means  of  keeping  it,  such  as  assurance  of  pardon  and  aids 
of  grace  needed  in  a  state  of  fall.  Thus,  so  far  as  the  admissi- 
bility of  new  light  was  concerned,  there  was  a  meeting  of  the 

*  The  title  of  the  work  of  Conybeare  (who  afterwards  became  Bishop 
of  Bristol)  was  "A  Defence  of  lievealed  Religion  ngmnst  the  Exceptions 
of  a  late  Writer,  in  his  book  intituled  '  Christianity  as  Old  as  the  Creation,'  " 
etc.,  by  John  Conybeare,  D.D.,  Rector  of  Exeter  College  in  Oxford. 
London:  1732. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  67 

position  of  Tindal,  who  here  from  the  opposite  side  accepted 
the  transcendentalism  of  Spinoza,  and  exalted  the  eternal  and 
immutable  at  the  expense  of  the  temporal,  while,  like  a  Deist 
who  believed  in  creation,  he  ought  rather  to  have  made  room 
for  history  and  progress.  Conybeare  also  showed  that  Tindal, 
while  exalting  in  every  man  the  light  of  nature,  and  making 
duty  discoverable  to  every  capacity,  inconsistently  admitted 
something  like  a  fall,  but  without  making  any  provision  for 
imperfection  and  temptation,  and  even  gave  up  his  case  as  to 
the  sufficiency  of  nature  by  inveighing  against  the  darkness 
and  superstition  in  which  Christianity  and  other  traditional  re- 
ligions had  involved  the  world. 

Nothing  could  be  more  complete  in  vindication  of  the  ad- 
missibility  of  revelation ;  but  as  to  its  proof,  which  was  alleged 
entirely  to  depend  on  natural  religion,  and  thus  destroy  itself, 
the  answer  was  less  full.  Conybeare  argued,  indeed,  that  an  in- 
spiration might  be  conceived  quite  distinct  from  TindaFs  al- 
leged building  on  natural  truths ;  and  that  even  if  an  inspired 
person  were  shut  up  to  receive  new  truth  by  proved  agreement 
with  old,  it  could  thus  enter.  But  he  limited  the  evidence,  so 
far  as  others  beyond  the  range  of  the  inspired  men  were  con- 
cerned, to  miracle  and  outward  sign,  which  came  in  and  did 
their  work,  subject  to  the  proviso  that  all  the  while  natural  re- 
ligion was  not  contradicted.  The  whole  of  this  school  of  apolo- 
gists, including  Conybeare,  thus  built  too  much  on  probability, 
instead  of  holding,  in  addition  to  miracle  and  prophecy,  that 
new  moral  truth  and  light  embodied  in  the  person  and  work  of 
Christ  was  a  separate  and  immediate  evidence,  as  Pascal  had  so 
grandly  maintained,  and  carried  the  revelation  home  to  all  who 
did  not  unfairly  exclude  it. 

Another  point  where  Tindal  was  effectually  met  was  in  urg- 
ing the  objection  that  Christianity  had  been  so  unequally  dif- 
fused; for  this  objection  was  abundantly  shown  to  apply  to 
natural  religion  as  well  as  revealed.  This  is  one  of  the  points 
where  Butler,  writing  in  1736,  six  years  after  Tindal,  comes 
into  line  with  Conybeare,  who,  of  all  the  authors  of  that  time, 
most  recalls  him,  while  other  points  of  contact  between  these 
writers  are  the  defence  of  positive  precepts,  the  plea  for  a  Medi- 
ator, and  the  stress  laid  on  human  ignorance,  though  all  these 
and  similar  topics  are  worked  by  Butler  into  an  analogical  ar- 
gument, such  as  was  possible  to  him  alone.  In  the  view  of  so 
earnest  a  debate,  we  cannot  but  linger  on  this  period ;  and 


68         UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

though  Tindal  has  been  forsaken  by  an  atheism  and  a  panthe- 
ism that  proclaim  as  confidently  the  clearness  of  nature  in  an 
entirely  opposite  direction,  and  would  be  opposed  by  an  ag- 
nosticism that  turns  the  twilight  of  Butler's  scheme  into  dark- 
ness, we  must  remember  that  the  issues  then  decided  are  of 
lasting  moment,  and  that,  by  the  admission  of  Mr.  John  Stuart 
Mill,  the  theism  that  then  triumphed  in  the  person  of  Butler 
and  others  was  not  the  Deistic  but  the  Christian.  "  The  argu- 
ment of  Butler's  'Analogy'  is,  from  its  own  point  of  view, 
conclusive ;  the  Christian  religion  is  open  to  no  objections, 
either  moral  or  intellectual,  which  do  not  apply  at  least  equally 
to  the  common  theory  of  Deism."  *f 

The  discussions  raised  by  Tindal  fixed  attention  more  strong- 
ly on  the  moral  side  of  Christianity ;  and,  in  addition  to  his 
own  criticism,  the  work  of  carrying  out  and  popularizing  the 
same  ideas  in  this  direction  was  taken  up  by  an  author  whose 
history  was  remarkable,  but  whose  permanent  influence  has 
been  much  less  than  that  of  the  leading  writers  on  the  differ- 
ent branches  of  this  controversy.  This  was  Thomas  Chubb, 
the  self-taught  glove-maker  of  Salisbury,  whose  acuteness  of 
mind  and  force  of  style  raised  him  to  a  place  of  some  note  in 
this  argument,  and  who,  though  he  handled  other  branches  of 
the  question,  may  be  best  considered  in  relation  to  his  adverse 
criticism  of  the  morality  of  the  New  Testament.  Chubb  was 
born  in  1679,  began  to  write  in  1715,  and  died  in  1747.  He 
had  been  preceded  by  a  writer  much  higher  in  name,  Lord 
Shaftesbury,  the  author  of  the  "  Characteristics  " — a  work  pub- 
lished in  its  collected  form  in  1711 — and  who  is  commonly 
ranked  with  the  Deistical  school ;  although  he  certainly  took 
no  such  part  in  attacking  the  recognized  views  of  Christianity 
as  any  of  the  writers  whom  we  have  considered.  On  the  con- 
trary, his  "  Letters  to  a  Student "  profess  a  zealous  interest  in 
true  Christianity ;  and  his  strokes  at  the  facts  or  doctrines  of 
the  Bible  elsewhere  are  too  covert,  and  too  much  defended  by 
prevailing  latitude  within  the  Church,  entirely  to  disprove  his 

*  "Three  Essays  on  Religion,"  p.  214. 

t  Some  years  ago,  in  Macmillaris  Magazine  (vol.  xxiv.,  p.  147),  Mr. 
Huxley  praised  the  Deistical  writers  as  examples  of  the  strength  of  Eng- 
lish  reasoning;  and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  a  lecture  delivered  in  Edin- 
burgh, spoke  of  them  as  un-refuted  by  Butler :  but  in  this  debate,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  John  S.  Mill,  they  were  completely  overcome,  bringing  no 
objections  against  Christianity  which  did  not  recoil  on  their  own  system. 


ENGLISH   DEISM.  69 

claim.  His  habitual  tendency  to  exalt  moral  precepts,  to  the 
neglect  of  outward  and  future  sanctions,  had  its  side  of  truth. 
His  application  of  ridicule  as  a  test  of  religious  principles, 
though  irreverent,  was~noi  wholly  absurd.  His  over-statement 
of  the  uncertainty  attending  the  evidence  and  meaning  of  the 
gospel  could  plead  the  incautious  language  of  Jeremy  Taylor 
and  Tillotson.  Still  this  eminent  moralist  and  fine  writer  had 
undoubtedly  sinned  against  the  religion  which  he  professed  to 
reverence,  and  in  nothing  more  than  in  his  accusations  of 
moral  defects  in  it,  as  wanting  in  "  private  friendship  and  in 
zeal  for  the  public  and  our  country."*  If_Chnstianj^^ 
every  part  of  human  nature,  even  without  teaching  friendsIiTplby" 
precept  or  example,  it  nursed  that  virtue ;  and  in  like  manner, 
as  it  plainly  recognized  country  and  duties  towards  it,  there 
was  no  need  specially  to  inculcate  zeal,  as  the  Christian  was  to 
be  "  zealously  affected  always  in  a  good  thing."  A  little  less 
of  paradox  and  a  little  more  of  kindliness  would  have  enabled 
Shaftesbnry  to  see  and  to  acknowledge  this,  and  to  let  fall  his 
whole  objections;  but  now  a  writer  appeared  in  whom  the 
paradox  was  greater  and  the  kindliness  less;  and  who  in  the 
more  advanced,  and  in  some  respects  exasperated,  stage  of  the 
controversy,  though  still  professing  to  be  a  Christian,  allowed 
less  to  Christianity  on  the  side  "of  moral  excellence  than  writers 
in  every  sense  alien  to  the  Christian  name  have  freely  done. 

Chubb,  indeed,  was  long  in  reaching  the  point  of  hostility  to 
which  he  ultimately  arrived.  His  first  tract,  which  in  its  man- 
uscript state  had  secured  for  him  the  favor  of  Whiston,  and 
was  published  in  1715,  in  defence  of  that  eccentric  writer's 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  was  at  least  Arian,  and  the  other  tracts, 
to  the  number  of  more  than  thirty,  which  ran  on  till  1730,  took 
Christian  ground,  though  of  a  Pelagian  character.  Some  of 
these  publications  displayed  no  small  ability, 'as,  for  example,  a 
set  of  controversial  treatises  against  Barclay's  "  Apology  for  the 
Quakers,"  and  some  pamphlets  on  "  Liberty  and  Necessity,"  in 
which  views  adverse  to  the  side  taken  by  Hobbes  and  Collins 
were  maintained.  The  duty  of  prayer  is  well  explained:  "To 
address  God  for  the  obtaining  a  thing,  and  yet  not  to  propose 
the  obtaining  that  thing  as  the  end  of  that  address,  is  absurd. "f 
Even  Christ,  within  limits,  is  held  to  be  the  proper  object  of 
prayer;  and  all  through  these  treatises  he  is  recognized  as  a 

*  "Clmract.,"  vol.  i.,  p.  77.  t  "  Tracts,"  p.  181. 


70         UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Saviour  in  the  Arian  or  high  Unitarian  sense.  This  is  still  the 
case  in  a  work  published  in  1738,  "The  True  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ  Asserted."  This  gospel  Chubb  sums  up  in  teaching  men 
to  live  according  to  the  reason  of  things,  in  affirming  the  effi- 
cacy of  repentance,  and  in  proclaiming  a  day  of  judgment. 
Christ  is  thus  a  lawgiver,  but  only  in  republishing  the  law  of 
nature,  and  in  the  same  sense  he  will  be  a  judge.  Chubb  thus 
goes  beyond  Tindal  in  allowing  an  actual  revelation,  which  is 
supported  by  miracles  and  a  corresponding  example,  and  is 
also  helped  in  its  moral  influence  by  the  founding  by  Christ  of 
societies,  and  the  institution  of  baptism  and  the  Lord's  supper. 
In  carrying  out  this  plan,  Christ  has  been  a  great  benefactor ; 
but  his  gospel  has  been  hindered  chiefly  by  three  great  corrup- 
tions— tracing  salvation  to  Christ's  imputed  righteousness,  ex- 
alting faith  at  the  expense  of  works,  and  confounding  the 
Christian  with  civil  society.  Such  is  the  scheme  of  Chubb  in 
its  Unitarian  shape ;  but  in  its  last  phase  as  revealed  in  his 
"Posthumous  Works"  (1748),  it  is  covered  with  doubt  and 
shade.  In  the  body  of  the  work  Christ's  mission  is  still  de- 
fended as  a  revelation,  but  a  postscript-  by  the  publisher  ap- 
pends a  long  various  reading  in  the  author's  handwriting,  given 
as  probably  containing  his  last  sentiments,  to  the  effect  that 
Christ's  mission  is  only  probably  divine ;  and  with  this  agrees 
the  whole  strain  of  the  book.  Christ's  miracles  are  explained 
away,  and  some  of  them  expressly  objected  to  as  incredible ; 
the  evidence  of  his  resurrection  is  insufficient ;  the  use  of  it,  in 
attesting  a  general  resurrection,  denied;  and  his  doctrine  gen- 
erally left  in  obscurity.  In  particular,  the  author  has  quite 
gone  back  from  his  faith  in  prayer,  doubts  any  natural  evidence 
for  the  capacity  of  the  soul  to  exist  apart  from  the  body,  and 
though  he  still  believes  in  retribution,  limits  it  apparently  to 
the  more  important  persons  and  events,  and  thus  cuts  off  many 
from  a  future  life,  and  decides  its  duration  as  to  none.  Hence, 
with  regard  to  the  morality  of  the  gospel,  great  changes  not 
unnaturally  occur.  In  regard  to  Christ's  own  virtue,  all  that 
he  allows  by  his  being  without  sin  is  "that  it  might  possibly 
be  meant  that  no  public  or  gross  miscarriage  could  be  charged 
upon  him."*  He  stumbles  at  much  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  such  as  the  precepts  as  to  non-resistance,  forgiveness, 
and  love  of  enemies,  as  if  the  latter  were  the  love  of  compla- 

*  "  Post.  Works,"  ii.,  p.  269. 


ENGLISH    DEISM.  71 

cency ;  takes  what  is  said  as  to  the  laying-up  of  treasure  liter- 
ally ;  and  even  speaks  as  if  the  taking  of  no  thought  for  the 
morrow  amounted  to  "thoughtlessness  and  indolence."  It  is 
needless  to  argue  these  points  at  the  present  day.  Even  Renan 
and  Strauss  see  evidence  in  these  things  of  the  greatness  of 
Jesus  as  a  moralist,  and  Mr.  Rathbone  Greg  is  almost  the  only 
one  who,  in  regard  to  non-resistance  and  non-accumulation  of 
treasure,  has  raised  again  eighteenth-century  difficulties.* 

It  is  interesting  to  find  Chubb  again  and  again  referring  to 
Methodism,  to  which,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  he  alone  of  all 
the  Deists  alludes.  He  argues  that  miracles  might  not  be 
needed  in  the  primitive  age,  as  Methodism  made  converts  with- 
out  them.  But  the  argument  for  Christianity  does  not  rest  on 
miracles  only,  but  on  anything  like  them  ;  and  the  operation  of 
grace  will  prove  a  revelation  as  much  as  the  presence  of  mira- 
cles. In  this  point  of  view  there  cannot  be  a  more  complete 
reply  than  Methodist  experience  gives  to  the  whole  question 
between  Chubb  and  his  opponents.  What  multitudes  of  per- 
sons— most  of  them,  like  Chubb,  of  the  working-class — have 
been  recovered  by  Methodism  to  natural  religion !  What  mul- 
titudes more  in  the  mission  field  have  been,  as  it  were,  created 
to  it !  Can  these  deny  the  sense  of  a  power  more  than  human, 
which  has  made  them  what  Deism  never  did,  or  attempted  to 
do — new  creatures  ?  Where,  then,  are  all  the  arguments  against 
the  Bible  from  the  inability  of  history  to  rise  to  the  level  of 
the  light  of  nature,  from  critical  difficulties  as  to  readings  and 
translations,  and  from  objections  to  particular  narratives  or 
precepts?  The  orb  of  Scripture  still  enlightens  the  soul  and 
enlightens  the  world,  and  the  class  that  are  most  blessed,  even 
intellectually,  are  the  very  class,  one  of  whose  misguided  lead- 
ers would  thus,  in  the  name  of  reason,  have  repelled  reason's 
best  helper  and  friend. 

The  last  writer  whom  we  have  to  notice  .  on  the  Deistic 
ground,  properly  so  called,  was  one  whose  literary  activity  co- 
incided with  the  latest  period  of  Chubb — Thomas  Morgan. 
The  year  of  his  birth  is  not  ascertained,  but  he  died  in  1 743. 
He  had  been  a  Dissenting  minister,  but,  on  becoming  an  Arian, 
was  dismissed.  His  name  is  connected  with  an  anonymous 
work  which  came  out  in  1737,  entitled  "The  Moral  Philoso- 
pher," to  which  two  volumes  were  added,  in  reply  to  Leland, 

*  Greg's  "Creed  of  Christendom  "  (Introduction  to  the  third  edition). 


72         UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Chapman,  and  Lowman  respectively,  in  1739  and  1740.  This 
writer  has  originality  and  controversial  vigor;  but  he  is  rash 
and  extravagant  beyond  example,  and  probably  was  less  fol- 
lowed than  any  of  the  leading  Deists.  It  would  hardly  have 
been  necessary  to  notice  him  at  length  but  for  his  peculiar 
position  in  relation  to  the  Old  Testament.  This  involves  two 
questions  in  respect  of  which  he  stands  out  from  the  other 
Deists — the  relation  of  our  Saviour  and  his  apostles  to  the  Old 
Testament,  and  the  value  of  the  Old  Testament  itself.  Morgan 
maintains,  out  and  out,  a  separation  of  Christ  and  Paul  from 
the  Old  Testament,  and  defends  them  on  this  ground,  while  he 
holds  that  the  Jewish  Christians  and  apostles  wanted  to  bind 
down  the  Mosaic  institute  forever  on  the  Jews,  and,  as  far  as 
they  could,  on  the  Gentiles;  for  he  does  not  admit  that  Paul 
went  into  any  agreement  with  them  at  the  Council  of  Jerusalem. 
Morgan,  in  denouncing  the  Jewish  Christians,  thus  contradicts 
Toland,  who,  in  his  "  Nazarenus,"  held  that  they  were  in  the 
right ;  and  in  exalting  Paul,  as  here  the  great  Freethinker,  he 
opposes  Chubb,  who  held  that  Paul's  conduct  in  relation  to 
circumcision  and  ceremonies  was  one  long  act  of  hypocrisy  and 
tergiversation.  The  sharpness  and  clearness  of  Morgan's  out- 
line is  a  distinct  anticipation  of  the  Tubingen  school ;  for  he 
appeals,  as  they  do,  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  in  proof  of 
the  rent  between  Paul  on  the  one  side  and  all  the  earlier  apos- 
tles on  the  other,  and  also  to  the  Apocalypse,  which,  like  that 
school,  he  holds  to  be  a  Johannine  and  anti-Pauline  writing  of 
the  age  of  Nero;  and  the  wonder  is  that,  with  these  views,  he 
should  have  accepted  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  A  still  greater 
wonder  is  that,  unlike  Baur,  Morgan  should  place  Jesus  himself 
on  as  advanced  a  stage  of  the  Pauline  Christianity  as  the  apos- 
tle. It  is  a  striking  evidence  of  the  subjective  nature  of  such 
criticism  that  when  so  many  leading  quantities  are  altered,  the 
results  are  still  the  same.  It  is  not  less  remarkable  that  Mor- 
gan, to  break  Jesus  off  from  the  Old  Testament,  resolutely  de- 
nies that  he  ever  accepted  the  rdle  of  Messiah  in  any  sense, 
whereas  Strauss  makes  the  peculiarity  of  his  career  lie  in  ac- 
cepting it,  and  seeking  to  spiritualize  it  even  by  his  death.* 


*  Strauss  thus  expresses  the  view  of  Jesus  in  regard  to  the  doubtful 
issue  of  his  closing  Jerusalem  journey  :  "  The  cause  itself  drove  him  for- 
ward ;  not  to  advance  was  to  lose  all  that  had  been  already  gained  ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  if  he  did  not  shrink  from  the  last  step,  then,  even  upon 


ENGLISH   DEISM.  73 

Thus  far  Morgan,  in  regard  to  the  New  Testament,  takes  up 
a  position  in  advance  of  Tindal  and  Chubb,  a  position  of  super- 
naturalism,  holding,  with  reference  to  Christ,  miracle  (though 
only  to  arouse,  and  not  to  prove),  sinlessriess  ("  Christ  who  was 
not  a  sinner  "  *),  and  a  place  "  at  the  head  of  a  new  dispensa- 
tion, under  which  men  should  be  justified  and  accepted."  f  It 
is  when  he  comes  to  speak  of  the  Old  Testament  that  he  goes 
quite  beyond  all  the  rest  in  the  opposite  direction  in  the  vehe- 
mence of  his  repudiation,  so  that  he  has  been  justly  called  a 
Gnostic,  and  compared  to  Marcion.  He  allows  a  covenant  with 
Abraham,  in  whom  all  nations  might  have  been  blessed ;  but 
from  the  Egyptian  period  onward  everything  is  degraded  to 
the  Egyptian  level ;  the  law  of  Moses  is  purely  political,  and 
tlie  people  prove  a  world's-wonder  of  stupidity  and  superstition, 
without  any  special  covenant  relation  to  God ;  their  conquests 
are  barbarities,  and  their  professed  mission  to  root  out  idolatry 
a  delusion  and  a  snare ;  their  ceremonies  have  no  typical  mean- 
ing, even  human  sacrifices  being  allowed,  while  their  priests  are 
corrupt  and  greedy  ;  their  prophetic  order,  though  not  without 
some  high  or  aim,  falls  into  imposture  ;  and  their  monarchy  ends 
in  misrule  and  captivity.  Ihe  sympathies  of  the  author  are 
with  Solomon  in  his  tolerant  old-age,  as  it  is  represented,  and 
with  Jezebel,  rather  than  with  the  zealots  of  the  law ;  and 
though  the  people  are  held  to  have  been  capable  of  learning  in 
exile  from  the  Persians  a  purer  Theism  and  the  doctrine  of  im- 
mortality, everything  goes  downward,  through  their  inherent 
Pharisaism  and  narrowness,  till  they  perish  as  a  nation,  with 
the  blind  confidence  that  their  national  God,  who  was  never 
anything  better  than  a  local  idol,  would  interfere  for  their  res- 
cue. It  is  not  necessary  to  report  the  answers  of  the  other  side 
to  these  extreme  positions,  which  were  the  scandal  of  this  con- 
troversy, as  the  style  of  Woolston  was  in  regard  to  miracles; 
and  certainly,  of  all  men,  Morgan  could  least  appeal  for  support 
here  to  his  favorite  apostle  Paul.  Nor  need  I  indicate  how 
much  more  just,  after  the  large  and  sympathetic  strain  of 
Ewald,  who  has  done  so  much  to  rescue  the  Old-Testament 
characters  that  have  been  most  assailed,  even  the  freer  criticism 
of  the  Old  Testament  has,  in  our  century,  become.  Yet  even 


an  adverse  issue,  the  effect  might  be  looked  for  which  has  never  failed 
when  a  martyr  has  died  for  a  great  idea." — Leben  Jesu,  p.  252. 

*  "  Moral  Philosopher,"  vol.  i.,  p.  225.  t  Ibid.,  p.  227. 

4 


74         UNBKLIKF  IX   TIIK   K1GHTKKN  I'll   CKNTLHV. 

^V  the  recklessness  of  Morgan  stirred  up  inquiry,  and  added  to 
*  Biblical  knowledge.  One  great,  but  on  its  own  side  paradoxi- 
cal, work  it  has  been  held  to  have  called  forth — Warburton's 
"  Divine  Legation  of  Moses."  This,  however,  is  a  mistake  ;  for 
Warburton's  work  was  announced  in  1736,  a  year  before  Mor- 
gan's appeared,  though  not  published  till  1738  ;  and  all  through 
its  voluminous  extent  it  contains  only  one  or  two  slighting 
allusions  to  "The  Moral  Philosopher."* 

III.  The  course  of  the  attack  and  defence  of  Christianity 
lias  now  brought  us  to  the  last  or  sceptical  period  in  the  his- 
tory of  English  Deism,  though  it  is  easy  to  see  that  an  element 
of  scepticism  lay  in  it  all  along,  and,  indeed,  some  of  those 
whose  names  1  have  to  mention  published  some  of  their  works 
before  this  date.  There  was  also,  as  may  easily  be  supposed, 
a  tendency  to  atheism  and  laxity  of  practice,  though  the  Deists 
proper  disowned  this  connection.  The  Christian  writers,  how- 
ever, while  so  far  accepting  this  disclaimer,  urged  home  the 
tendency ;  and  this  was  made  the  subject  of  that  extraordinary 
work  "The  Minute  Philosopher"  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  who 
borrowed  this  title  from  an  epithet  of  Cicero  levelled  against 
yf^  the  Epicureans,  as  reducing  everything  to  littleness  by  banish- 
ing God  and  moral  government.!  Berkeley's  work,  published 
in  London  in  1732,  immediately  on  his  return  from  America, 
where  it  had  been  composed  in  the  alcove  at  Whitehall,  near 
Newport,  in  Rhode  Island,  being  the  only  product  of  the  Deistic 
controversy  born  in  the  New  World,  goes  far  beyond  its  title, 
discussing  with  inimitable  freshness  and  spirit,  in  the  form  of 
the  Platonic  dialogue,  not  only  the  questions  between  Deists  on 
the  one  hand,  and  atheists  and  sceptics  on  the  other,  but  almost 
all  the  points  between  the  Deists  and  the  Christians.  It  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  lively  and  even  solid  works  of  the 
controversy,  containing  also  an  application  of  his  New  Theory 
of  Vision  to  the  proof  of  the  Being  of  God  ;  but  it  is  only  re- 
ferred to  here,  to  show*  how  the  most  generous  and  candid 
minds  of  that  day  recognized  the  affinity  between  the  positions 
of  Deism  as  defended  against  Christianity,  and  more  extreme 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  F. 

t  The  alternative  title,  "Alciphron,  or  the  Minute  Philosopher,"  is  in- 
tended by  the  name  "  Alciphron,"  or  Strong-mind,  applied  to  the  repre- 
sentative of  unbelief,  to  give  another  stroke  to  the  party.  Berkeley's 
descriptions  in  this  work  are  true  to  American  scenery. 


ENGLISH    DEISM.  75 

tendencies,  and  gave  warning  that  the  issues  had  already  begun 
to  be  developed. 

In  now  trying  to  arrange  the  sceptical  writers  that  come  at 
the  close  of  this  period  (for  no  avowed  atheists  appeared),  it 
is  easily  seen  how  different  are  the  positions  of  those  that  fall 
vaguely  under  this  head.  The  only  thorough  and  philosophi- 
cal sceptic  is  Hume,  followed  by  Gibbon  into  history,  but  with- 
out any  philosophical  basis ;  while  Hume  is  preceded  by  two 
writers  who  have  not  philosophy  enough  even  to  reach  scepti- 
cism— the  younger  Dodwell,  whose  premises  lead  to  a  sceptical 
issue  which  he  did  not  draw,  and  Bolingbroke,  whose  tendency 
is  rather  to  a  universal  self-contradiction,  and  especially  as  to 
theism,  than  to  scepticism  as  a  philosophical  principle.  Hence 
our  remarks  on  Dodwell  and  Bolingbroke  need  only  to  be  brief; 
and  Gibbon  lies  too  much  outside  the  Deistic  controversy  to 
call  for  much  animadversion. 

Henry  Dodwell  was  a  lawyer — the  son  of  the  celebrated  non- 
juror  of  the  same  name — and  published  in  London  in  1742  his 
work,  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  an  Oxford  student,  which  was 
entitled  "  Christianity  not  Founded  on  Argument."  This  work 
had  no  small  novelty,  and  it  made  a  great  sensation.  Its  au- 
thor writes  as  a  zealous  Christian,  who  deplores  the  folly  of 
trying  to  prove  Christianity,  and  falls  back  on  the  work  and 
witness  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  is  described  in  the  most  ex- 
alted strain  of  mysticism  as  "  an  irresistible  light  from  heaven, 
that  flashes  conviction  in  a  moment,  so  that  this  faith  is  com- 
pleted in  an  instant,  and  the  most  perfect  and  finished  creed 
produced  at  once."  *  Henceforth  "  we  are  not  left  liable  one 
moment  to  a  possibility  of  error  and  imposture."!  Reason 
has  nothing  to  do  either  in  furnishing  the  evidence  or  examin- 
ing the  contents  of  Scripture ;  but  its  place  is  taken  by  a  u  con- 
stant particular  revelation  imparted  separately  and  supernatu- 
rally  to  every  individual."  \  It  might  seem  as  if  the  design  of 
our  author  were  thus  to  exalt  the  work  of  the  spirit,  and  found 
on  it,  however  extravagantly  stated,  a  genuine  faith.  But  it  is 
very  different,  seeking  to  try  by  such  an  extreme  standard  the  \. 
faith  of  the  Christian  as  possibly  justified  also  by  reason ;  and  /\ 
then  because  reason  necessarily  cannot  reach  this,  and  this  is 
not  seriously  proposed,  to  represent  faith  as  mere  delusion. 
It  is  exactly  the  same  process  as  in  Collins.  Prophecy,  taken 

t  P.  GO.  \  P.  11 2. 


70         UNBELIEF  IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

literally,  fails ;  and  so  also,  reason,  as  a  ground  of  faith,  fails. 
But  there  is  still  an  allegorical  fulfilment,  and  there  is  still  a 
mystical  faith ;  while  each  is  laughed  at  by  its  proposer  rather 
than  seriously  urged.  Nothing  can  be  more  unreasonable  than 
the  way  in  which  Dodwell  excludes  reason  from  entering  into 
faith.  Reason,  by  demanding  suspense  of  judgment  on  the 
side  of  the  young,  would  forbid  education,  would  brand  inquiry 
as  disbelief,  would  fail  to  reach  strength  and  unity  of  convic- 
tion, and  so  forth.  It  is  all  the  while  kept  out  of  sight  that 
the  agency  of  the  Spirit  of  God  includes  the  use,  not  of  new 
truth,  but  of  the  very  truth  of  Scripture,  which,  however,  this 
writer  depreciates  as  "  the  voice  of  God,  which  has  long  since 
dwindled  to  human  tradition,"*  so  that,  however  Christians  may 
exalt,  as  they  do,  the  inward  working  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  they 
never  shut  out  the  reasonable  action  of  truth  on  the  soul. 
When  this  was  made  clear,  the  hollowness  of  this  treatise  be- 
vy came  apparent,  and  a  revulsion  was  rather  produced  by  the  pro- 
/Vessedly  reverential,  but  really  irreverent,  use  of  a  Bible  doc- 
trine to  overthrow  Bible  Christianity ;  for  this  writer  ridiculed 
the  faith  of  a  mother  or  sister  thus  implanted,  and  having  all 
the  infallibility  of  inspiration.!  I  regret,  therefore,  that  I  can- 
not agree  with  Lechler,  weighty  as  his  voice  is,  in  supposing 
that  Dodwell  created  any  epoch.  Nor  do  I  see  that  he  was 
inwardly  and  deeply  sceptical  in  holding  a  dualism  of  faith  and 
reason,  for  while  he  no  doubt  struck  out  at  Dr.  Clarke  and  the 
Boyle  Lecture,  and  his  arguments  against  reason  in  relation  to 
Christianity  necessarily  admitted  of  extension  to  reason  in  re- 
lation to  natural  religion — an  extension  complained  of  even  by 
Chubb — I  find  no  evidence  of  any  deep  seriousness  on  the  part 
of  Dodwell  in  this  direction,  and  his  great  aim  seems  to  have 
"T^been  to  perplex  and  stagger  the  orthodox,  while  he  thought 
that  the  freethinkers  could  take  care  of  themselves.  Nor  can 
I  agree  that  Dodwell  was  not  fully  answered.  Not  to  speak 
of  others,  he  was  admirably  met  by  Doddridge,  whose  faculties 
never  appeared  to  greater  advantage ;  and  who,  by  setting  forth 
the  doctrine  of  the  influence  of  the  spirit  with  warmth  as  well 
as  discrimination,  not  only  corrected  DodwelFs  exaggerations, 
but  redressed  a  frequent  omission  in  the  Christian  argument.]; 

*P.  52.  t  P.  114. 

J  Dodd ridge's  answer  to  Dodwell  is  found  in  his  collected  Works  (vol. 
i.,  pp.  472-590).  The  three  letters  are  dated  Northampton,  March  4, 
1742-43. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  77 

Among  the  sceptical  writers  of  this  period  I  have,  with  some 
hesitation,  ranked  the  celebrated  Lord  Bolingbroke,  in  spite  of 
his  own  constant  profession  to  rank  as  a  theist.  To  enter  into 
the  political  or  general  literary  career  of  this  statesman  is  not 
my  purpose.  His  life  measures  the  whole  Deistic  controversy, 
as  he  was  born  in  1678  and  died  in  1751.  Whatever  great- 
ness he  had  as  a  politician  and  an  orator  has  not  been  carried 
by  him  into  this  region  of  argument ;  as  by  universal  consent 
his  posthumous  "  Philosophical  Works,"  published  in  five  vol- 
umes in  1754,  and  mainly  occupied  with  the  relations  of  phi- 
losophy and  religion,  and  the  claims  of  natural  religion  and  rev- 
elation, fall  below  what  was  expected  of  him,  and  have  long 
since  passed  into  oblivion.  His  failure  is  due  not  so  much  to 
the  want  of  general  intelligence  and  literary  power,  for  these 
volumes  give  token  of  a  large,  vigorous,  and  cultured  mind,  as 
to  the  unhappy  strength  of  prejudice,  and  even  antipathy,y 
which  break  out  in  an  unfairness  and  violence  to  which  hard- 
ly any  other  of  the  Deistic  writers  attain,  and  which  contrast 
singularly  with  the  sweep  and  grace  of  style  which  these  most- 
ly lack.  There  is  also  an  ambitious  aim,  which  Bolingbroke 
was  not  fitted,  even  had  his  conception  of  Christianity  been 
true,  to  realize.  This  was  to  illustrate  the  influence  of  philos- 
ophy, especially  the  Platonic,  in  producing  or  corrupting  it,  to 
disengage  the  primitive  Christianity  from  the  alleged  Pauline 
and  patristic  depravations  which  it  underwent,  and  to  trace  the 
career  of  spiritual  tyranny  by  which  it  was  moulded  into  the 
Papacy  and  other  usurpations.  All  this  was  to  furnish  the 
means  of  estimating  the  comparatively/slender  obligation  of 
mankind  to  ChristianityJ)and  especiallyto  unmask  the  error, 
superstition,  and  fanaticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  for  which 
Christianity  had  become  responsible.  Now,  to  all  this  Boling- 
broke was  wholly  unequal.  He  had  filled  his  mind  with  that 
crude  and  uncritical  knowledge,  to  whose  vision  Orpheus,  Py- 
thagoras, Plato,  and  Plotinus  stood  all  on  the  same  line.  He  was 
as  much  at  sea  in  the  Fathers,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  read 
the  Old  or  New  Testament  in  the  original.  WThere  his  shrewd- 
ness and  his  knowledge  of  history  come  to  his  help  is  in  his 
account  of  the  political  and  hierarchical  corruptions  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  but  here  as  elsewhere  his  work  is  a  very  defective  an- 
ticipation of  Gibbon,  because  without  the  learning  and  fairness, 
after  its  kind,  which  Gibbon  displays.  It  is  certainly  astonish- 
ing that  any  statesman  should  speak  of  the  majestic  structure 


78         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

reared  by  Moses  only  in  terms  of  contempt  and  vituperation. 
"  He  put  this  one  God  to  as  many  and  as  unworthy  uses,  in  the 
service  of  man,  as  the  heathens  put  their  many  gods."  *  He 
grants,  indeed,  sublime  ideas  of  God  "  in  many  passages  in  Job, 
in  Isaiah,  in  the  Psalms,  and  in  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;"  but  adds,  "  It  will  not  be  hard  to  quote  Mahometan 
and  even  pagan  writers  who  have  spoken  of  him  with  as  much 
nobleness  of  style,"f  and  sums  up  the  character  of  the  Jews 
"  as  the  most  illiterate,  superstitious,  and  absurd  race  of  men 
who  ever  pretended  to  a  system  of  things,  divine  or  human."  J 
These  denunciations,  however,  of  a  people  who  carried  their  god 
"  before  them  in  a  wooden  trunk  "  §  would  not  rank  Boling- 
broke  among  sceptical  unbelievers,  for  they  are  compatible  with 
the  strongest  dogmatism.  Nor  do  I  fasten  this  character  on 
him  simply  from  his  contradictions  as  to  Christianity,  as,  for 
example,  where  he  says  of  it,  "  The  gospel  of  Christ  is  one  con- 
tinued  lesson  of  the  strictest  morality,  of  justice,  of  benevolence, 
and  of  universal  charity ;"  ||  and  yet  charges  on  our  Saviour 
that  "  He  gave  answers  that  were  equivocal  ;"^[  that  "  He  kept 
the  Jews  in  error — at  least  did  nothing  to  draw  them  out  of 
it;"**  and  roundly  declares,  "  On  the  whole,  the  moral  charac- 
ter imputed  to  the  Supreme  Being  by  Christian  theology  differs 
little  from  that  imputed  to  him  by  the  Jewish,  the  difference 
being  more  apparent  than  real. "ft  Where  Bolingbroke  tends 
to  scepticism,  as  contradistinguished  from  other  Deists,  is  in  his 
doctrine  that  only  God's  natural  attributes,  with  his  wisdom, 
are  cognizable  by  us,  but  that  we  dare  not  pronounce  on  such 
so-called  attributes  as  goodness  and  justice.  "Divines  have 
distinguished  in  their  bold  analyses  between  God's  physical 
and  moral  attributes,  for  which  distinction,  though  I  see  sev- 
eral theological,  I  do  not  see  one  religious  purpose  that  it 
is  necessary  to  answer."  JJ  Hence  he  argues  at  great  length 
against  this  distinction,  and  even  seeks,  in  connection  with  the 
rejection  of  it,  to  vindicate  the  government  of  God  in  the  un- 
equal distributions  of  the  present  life.  There  is  nothing  in 
God,  as  in  us,  requiring  any  day  of  judgment  to  clear  up  these 
difficulties ;  and  hence  this  argument  for  a  future  life  has  no 


*  "Philosophical  Works,"  vol.  v.,  p.  371.  t  Ibid.,  p.  371. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  162.  §  Vol.  iv.,  p.  94.  ||  Ibid.,  p.  144. 

f  Vol.  iii.,p.  212.  **  Ibid.,  pp.  21,  211.  ft  Vol.  v.,  p.  175. 

U  Vol.  iii.,p.  411. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  79 

solidity,  and  the  doctrine  of  such  attributes  mutable  by  man 
is  only  a  playing  by  Christian  divines  into  the  hands  of  the 
atheists.  Now,  assuredly,  if  Bolingbroke  had  stuck  to  this,  we 
should  have  a  sceptical  principle;  and  God  would  be  no  God 
if  he  might,  for  aught  we  knew,  be  morally  unlike  us,  and — 
abating  certain  excepted  cases — wholly  incapable  of  imitation 
by  us.  But  here  again,  with  his  frequent  incoherence,  this  is 
recalled,  and  language  like  this  is  held:  "It  is  not  possible  for 
me  to  conceive  any  attribute  standing  on  the  other  side  of 
God's  justice.  No  attribute  can  hold  that  place,  except  cruelty 
be  a  divine  attribute,  which  it  would  be  blasphemous  to  sup- 
pose, though  the  Jews  and  some  other  barbarous  people  have 
supposed  it  to  be  so."*  This  is  eminently  characteristic  of 
Bolingbroke'a  whole  procedure.  God  is  to  be  lifted,  even  by 
a  departure  from  the  creed  of  Deism,  above  our  human  ideas  of  . 
justice  or  goodness,  that  there  may  be  no  need  of  future  judg- 
ment ;  and  yet  these  ideas  are  to  be  retained,  when  the  morali- 
ty of  the  Old  Testament  or  of  Christianity,  which  is  declared 
little  different,  is  to  be  weighed  and  found  wanting.  This  ele- 
ment of  inconsistency  and  prejudice  no  doubt  greatly  limited 
Bolingbroke1  s  authority  in  England ;  but  unhappily  it  reap- 
peared in  Voltaire,  who,  influenced  by  him  perhaps  more  than 
by  any  other,  took  up  the  same  conflict  in  France. 

When  we  come  now  to  the  name  which  alone  represents 
philosophical  scepticism  in  the  world  of  English  unbelief — that 
of  David  Hume  (1711-1 776) — it  must  be  evident  that  some 
deeply  interesting  questions,  bearing  on  Hume's  position  in 
relation  to  philosophy  and  religion,  need  not  be  here  raised. 
Granting  that  Hume  wished  to  rank  as  a  sceptic,  in  the  broad 
sense  of  that  term,  we  need  not  inquire  here  whether  he  mere- 
ly wished  to  reduce  to  a  sceptical  or  contradictory  issue  the 
premises  of  other  philosophers,  or  whether  he  struck  more 
deeply  at  any  possible  harmony  of  the  data  of  reason.  We 
need  not  inquire  whether  his  "Treatise  of  Human  Nature"  or 
his  later  works,  or  some  deeper  element  common  to  both,  is  to 
be  accepted  as  the  last  word  of  his  speculation.  We  need  not 
inquire  what  the  value  is  as  knowledge  of  all  that  can  be  re- 
^duced  to  impressions  and  ideas,  and  how  far  Hume  proceeded 
as  a  dogmatist  in  doubting  of  all  that  lay  beyond,  whether  as 
to  self  or  God.  Nor  need  we  inquire  how  far  his  procedure  in 


^/y,/    y/       *vui.  v.,,,.144,  /y  ^  y,/, 

/^    ttyv&CWf*^  tAM*     CSAVVIJU    ~  <Z^W*5«&Grtt*n* 

i^/&*s4stfov*'  •  #1 ' aM^/fc+^L,   f~UjiA£?C'  %>  /Vttft^t  ^>w&H*+£4 


80         UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

dealing  with  higher  truths  than  those  of  experience  was  always 
strictly  on  the  basis  of  his  own  system,  if  system  it  could  be 
called,  and  not  of  other  principles  of  criticism.  It  is  enough 
for  our  purpose  that,  in  all  his  works  alike,  the  result  is  reached, 
that  beyond  the  uniform  succession  of  sensible  phenomena 
there  is  nothing  j>roved  of  self,  or  God,  or  moral  government, 
f  and  apparently  nothing  provable  if  his  inlets  of  knowledge  are 
alone  allowed.  Hume  secures  a  kind  of  provisional  substitute 
for  mental  unity  and  identity  in  his  succession  of  phenomena, 
where  uniformity  takes  the  place  of  causation ;  and  he  builds 
up  on  the  sense  of  pleasure  and  the  law  of  association  a  scheme 
of  utility  which  comes  into  the  place  of  moral  order.  But  for 
God,  and  all  that  is  connected  with  his  character  and  attri- 
butes, his  theory  of  knowledge  has  no  door  of  entrance,  and 
hence,  except  in  so  far  as  his  procedure  is  criticism  of  the 
theories  of  others,  it  ends  in  negative  dogmatism.  Hence  his 
writings  on  natural  religion  are  not,  to  my  mind,  sufficiently 
fair,  for  they  suggest  that  the  belief  in  God  is  a  rationally 
provable  thesis,  only  not  proved ;  whereas,  on  Hume's  princi- 
ples, it  is,  ab  initio,  beyond  the  region  of  probation.  His 
"  Natural  History  of  Religion,"  which  derives  theism  from 
polytheism,  and  contrasts  the  one  with  the  other  as  to  effects 
and  consequences,  not  only  departs  from  the  whole  school  of 
Deists,  but  leaves  out  of  sight  on  his  ground  the  essential  dark- 
ness of  the  subject,  except  as  between  two  different  forms  of 
an  illusion.  In  like  manner,  his  "  Dialogues  on  Natural  Re- 
ligion "  often  wander  from  this  fundamental  point,  for  moral 
difficulties  have  here  no  place,  and  the  case  would  be  as  hope- 
.less,  though  these  did  not  press  on  theism  or  Christianity ;  and 
such  difficulties  as  that  the  world  is  a  singular  effect  are  equally 
irrelevant,  except  as  a  mere  argumentum  ad  kominem;  for  even 
if  worlds  were  created,  one  after  another,  in  our  view,  it  would 
come  to  the  same  issue;  and  we  could  not  connect  any  or  all 
with  an  utterly  incognizable  Author.  The  same  remark  ap- 
,  I  think,  to  his  celebrated  argument  against  miracles.  It 
professes  to  be  a  new  argument,  which  the  author  flattered  him- 
self  he  had  discovered,  and  an  argument  resting  on  the  relation 
of  testimony  to  experience.  Our  faith  in  the  uniformity  of 
nature,  and  our  faith  in  the  reliableness  of  testimony,  is  each 
due  to  experience.  Hence  the  one  at  highest  can  only  balance 
the  other ;  and  we  never  can  believe  a  miracle.  Now,  not  to 
mention  that  there  is  nothing  here  peculiar  to  testimony,  and 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  81 

we  could  not  be  kept  from  believing  testimony  if  we  could  only 
believe  sense,  the  root  of  the  difficulty  lies  in  the  idea  of  a 
uniformity  of  nature  without  a  God  behind  it ;  for  if  God  be 
once  believed  in,  a  miracle  becomes  credible,  either  as  a  matter 
of  sense  or  of  testimony ;  and  there  is  no  special  difficulty  in 
testimony  such  as  Hume  urged.  This  is  admitted  by  Mr.  John 
Stuart  Mill  in  these  words :  "  Once  admit  a  God,  and  the  pro- 
duction by  his  direct  volition  of  an  effect  which  in  any  case 
owed  its  origin  to  his  creative  will  is  no  longer  a  purely  arbi- 
trary hypothesis  to  account  for  the  fact,  but  must  be  reckoned 
with  as"  a  serious  possibility."*  It  is  true  that  Mr.  Mill,  when 
weighing  the  evidence,  chiefly  on  grounds  which  have  emerged 
since  Hume's  days  as  to  the  growing  rigor  of  scientific  induc- 
tion, comes  to  the  conclusion  that  "  miracles  have  no  claim 
whatever  to  the  character  of  historical  facts ;"  but,  at  any  rate, 
the  strength  of  Hume's  argument  is  by  him  abandoned,  and  its 
apparent  force  is  said  to  lie  in  the  exclusion  of  God,  just  as  the 
admission  of  God,  even  in  idea,  requires  Mr.  Mill  to  find  a  still 
newer  exception  to  miracles ;  and  we  learn  that  what  may  have 
been  credible  in  Hume's  days  is  so  no  longer,  as  our  century  is 
so  much  more  scientific  than  his. 

In  truth,  Hume  had  little  in  common  with  ordinary  Deism. 
Not  only  did  he  write  to  Dr.  Blair  in  reference  to  Campbell, 
when  the  latter  sent  him  his  "  Dissertation  on  Miracles,"  "  I 
could  wish  your  friend  had  not  denominated  me  an  infidel 
writer  ;"f  but  when  Mrs.  Mallet,  wife  of  the  editor  of  Boling- 
broke,  accosted  him  with  the  words  "  We  Deists  ought  to  know 
one  another,"  he  turned  away  with  the  disclaimer,  "  Madam,  I 
am  no  Deist;  -I  do  not  style  myself  so;  neither  do  I  desire  to 
be  known  by  that  appellation."!  Hume  was  too  acute  to  have 
adopted  many  of  their  reasonings  ;  for  example,  that  of  Boling- 
broke,  who  argued  from  general  tradition  that  the  world  had  a 
beginning  ;§  for  this,  by  breaking  the  uniformity  of  nature,  at 
once  led  to  miracle;  nor  could  he  have  held  for  a  moment, 
with  Tindal.  the  clearness  of  the  light  of  nature.  He  lies  out- 
side of  the  Deistical  controversy  in  time  not  less  than  in  spirit. 
He  had,  indeed,  fallen  upon  his  view  as  to  miracles  when  still 
in  the  Jesuit  College  at  La  Fleche,  and  meant  to  include  it  in 
his  Treatise  in  1739;  but  it  did  not  come  out  till  his  "Philo- 

*  "  Three  Essays,"  p.  232.     t  Burton's  "  Life  of  Hume,"  ii.,  p.  11G. 
t  Ibid.,  ii.,  p.  141.  §  "Philosophical  Works,"  vol.  v.,  p.  230. 

4* 


82         UNBELIEF  IN    THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

sophical  Essays  concerning  the  Understanding,"  in  1748.  Nor 
was  this  essay  to  all  appearance  connected  with  the  very  inter- 

/  esting  revival  of  the  controversy  on  miracles  which  began  with 
the  first  answer  (in  1744),  fifteen  years  after  its  publication,  to 
Sherlock's  "  Trial  of  the  Witnesses,"  and  ran  on  till  West  "  On 
the  Resurrection,"  in  1747.  There  is  no  trace  of  connection 

**"  between  this  very  late  passage  of  the  struggle,  to  which  also 
Lyttelton  on  the  "Conversion  of  St.  Paul"  belonged,  and 
Hume's  disquisition,  though  the  latter  became  immediately  a 
mark  for  criticism  on  its  own  ground,  of  which  by  far  the 
ablest  specimen  was  that  of  Campbell  in  1762.  The  later  years 

^of  Hume  are  marked  by  reticence  as  to  his  religious  position. 
He  is  even  pleased  with  any  relenting  on  the  part  of  the  ortho- 
dox towards  him,  and  speaks  of  his  employment  in  the  French 
embassy  under  one  of  religious  profession  like  Lord  Hertford 
as  working  for  him  "  a  kind  of  regeneration."  *  It  was  cer- 
tainly to  his  credit  that  when  Voltaire  and  others  were  going 
back  from  natural  religion,  Hume,  who  had  never  professed  it 
like  them,  should  have  stood  out  against  the  atheism  of  Pari- 

dj sian  circles  at  the  expense  of  raillery  for  his  "  prejudices." 
There  does  not  seem,  however,  any  ground  for  connecting  the 
name  of  Hume  with  any  such  victory  of  faith,  even  in  its  phil- 
osophical sense,  by  a  kind  of  salto  mortale,  over  scepticism,  as 
Jacobi,  for  example,  might  have  connected  with  his  system ; 
least  of  all,  however  gladly  we  would  believe  it,  in  its  highest 
meaning.  In  the  face  of  any  such  supposition,  the  posthumous 
publication  of  the  "  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion,"  against 
the  strongest  advice  of  Adam  Smith  and  other  friends,  would 
become  a  deeper  mystery.  But  while  so  much-  of  the  career 
of  this  great  thinker,  in  thought  so  clear,  in  heart  so  kindly,  is 
on  its  spiritual  side  a  darkness  and  a  grief  to  Christian  minds, 
let  us  remember  the  undoubted  evidence  of  reaction  and  recoil 
from  the  gloom  of  doubt  which  no  one  has  more  eloquently 
expressed,  and  let  us  give  as  much  acceptance  as  we  can  to  the 
words  uttered  amidst  the  shock  of  his  mother's  death,  and  ut- 
tered as  a  reply  to  the  charge  of  having  broken  with  all  Chris- 
tian hope — "  Though  I  throw  out  my  speculations  to  entertain 
the  learned  and  metaphysical  world,  yet  in  other  things  I  do 
not  think  so  differently  from  the  rest  of  the  world  as  you 
imagine."! 

*  Burton,  ii.,  p.  183.  t  Ibid.,  i.,  p.  294. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  83 

The  only  other  name  on  which  \ve  need  to  touch,  that  of 
Gibbon,  less  as  a  thinker  than  Hume,  but  greater  as  an  histo- 
rian, has  left  a  mark  in  literature  which  makes  us  feel  how 
much  smaller  than  these  writers  were  the  foremost  we  have  in 
this  lecture  considered.  Gibbon,  too,  lies  outside  their  track, 
for  he  was  born  in  1737,  when  the  stress  of  the  controversy 
was  past,  and  he  died  in  1794,  when  quite  other  thoughts  were 
agitating  the  world,  and  driving  men,  himself  included,  backX 
from  negation  to  any  possible  hold  of  belief.  He  is  here 
ranked  with  the  sceptical  rather  than  with  any  other  school, 
not,  as  in  the  case  of  Hume,  from  any  philosophical  theory,  but 
from  a  habit  of  mind.  His  conversion  in  his  seventeenth  year, 
and  in  the  midst  of  his  Oxford  course,  to  Romanism  casts  a 
sad  light  upon  the  state  of  that  university,  and,  indeed,  of  the 
Christianity  of  England,  which  had  so  little  inspiration  of  faith, 
or  even  of  learning,  to  preoccupy  such  a  nature.  Here,  as  al- 
ways, scepticism,  with  or  without  a  passage  through  credulity, 
is  more  or  less  the  penalty  and  the  fruit  of  foregoing  unfaith- 
fulness in  the  Church  of  Christ.  Nor  was  there  anything  in 
the  pale  and  waning  moon  of  Continental  Protestantism,  by 
whose  glimmering  ray  he  returned  from  the  maze,  to  enkindle 
and  guide  the  recovered  proselyte,  whose  career  is  henceforth 
liker  that  of  Bayle  than  of  Chillingworth,  alive  to  the  boundless 
interest  of  knowledge,  but  dead  to  all  higher  impulse.  The 
world  is  to  Gibbon,  in  the  deepest  sense,  without  a  centre  and 
without  a  plan  ;  but  its  changing  and  checkered  course  has  for 
him  an  unfathomable  attraction  ;  and  by  his  power  to  reflect 
this,  through  multiplicity  in  unity,  his  knowledge  and  histori- 
cal imagination  enable  him  probably  to  surpass  all  historians. 
His  unity  is  given  him  by  the  vastness  of  Rome  and  a  certain 
tragic  loftiness  by  its  decay;  and  the  immense  procession 
sweeps  through  centuries,  involving  almost  all  mankind,  of  all 
races,  faiths,  and  stages  of  civilization,  without  exhausting  his 
interest  or  his  sense  of  grandeur.  It  is  here  that  Gibbon  comes 
into  contact  with  Christianity,  furnishing  in  his  **  Decline  and 
Fall,"  as  it  were,  a  negative  of  Church  history,  exhibiting  the 
web  on  its  reverse  side,  but  faithful  still  to  his  duty  towards  it,  ) 
so  far  at  least  as  one  of  the  great  forces  that  have  moved  the 
world.  This  is  not  only  true  when  he  is  dealing  out  justice  to 
names  like  Athanasius,  Gregory  Nazianzen,  and  Chrysostom ; 
but  even  where  his  aim  is  less  friendly,  and  his  color  even 
malign,  the  impression  of  force  and  life  in  the  Christian  move- 


84         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

ment  is  given  back  ;  and  there  is  no  more  effectual,  though  re- 

"/  luctant,  witness  of  its  world-shaking,  world-subduing  power  than 
Gibbon.  No  Christian,  therefore,  but  will  rejoice  that,  with  its 
great  faults  on  this  side,  a  history  like  that  of  Gibbon  has  been 

^Cwritten  ;  and  Christianity  needs  too  much  to  have  its  infirmities, 
as  a  human  product,  displayed  for  its  own  correction,  to  quarrel 
even  with  its  severest  censor  who  challenges  historical  evidence 
for  his  accusations.  In  particular  allegations  Gibbon  may  have 
failed,  but  many  of  his  charges  hit  some  weak  point,  where 

"/   Christianity  is  the  better  for  the  criticism  ;  and  if  his  general 
spirit  be  complained  of,  as,  for  example,  in  his  sympathy  with 
Mohammedanism  rather  than  with  so  much  higher  a  faith,  this 
teaches  the  Church  of  Christ  to  remember  its  own  corruption 
as  the  precursor  of  its  defeat,  while  there  is  no  more  striking 
/moral  which  Gibbon  has  unconsciously  helped  to  point  than 
/the  divine  vitality,  as  since  tested,  of  the  one  religion,  while 
/'the  other  has  been  sinking  into  senility  and  exhaustion.     In 
'  ihis  point  of  view,  or  as  a  permanent  measure  of  the  strength 
and  enduring  resource  of  Christianity,  the  celebrated  inquiry  of 
Gibbon  as  to  Secondary  Causes  of  the  success  of  Christianity 
has  a  special  interest.     Gibbon  is  illogical  here,  for  the  most  of 
these  causes — the  monotheistic  zeal,  the  'faith  in  immortality, 
the  virtue,  the  unity — were  parts  of  Christianity  needing  them- 
selves to  be  accounted  for,  while  the  miracles  were,  according 

"X,  to  him,  a  spurious  appendage,  and  thus  could  not  long  have 
wielded  influence.  But  the  starting  and  prosecuting  of  such 
an  investigation  raised  Gibbon  far  above  the  Deistical  school, 
who  treated  the  whole  phenomenon  as  beneath  them,  or  sum- 
marily ascribed  it  to  imbecility  and  imposture.  In  this  respect 
Gibbon  is  the  most  modern  of  historians,  as  he  had  most  of  the 
historical  sense;  and  the  question  which  he  raised  is  still  pur- 
sued with  the  most  eager  efforts  by  those  who  endeavor  to  ac- 
count for  Christianity  itself,  and  for  its  success,  without  affect- 
ing to  believe,  with  Gibbon,  "  that  it  was  owing  to  the  con- 

Y  vincing  evidence  of  the  doctrine  itself,  and  to  the  ruling  provi- 
dence of  its  great  Author."  * 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  Gibbon,  in  his  later  years,  like 
Hume,  rather  returns  upon  his  own  footsteps  as  a  leader  in  the 

^movement  party  throughout  Europe.  The  political  tendencies 
which  had  made  him  displeased  with  Christianity  as  an  inno- 

*  Chap,  xv.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  2.     Bolni's  edition. 


ENGLISH  DEISM.  85 

vation  on  polytheism  filled  him  with  alarm  when  the  fruits  of 
vmsettlement  appeared  in  the  French  Revolution.  The  freedom 
of  thought  which  had  looked  so  attractive  in  the  gay  salons  of  . 
Paris  wore  a  different  aspect  as  it  came  near  his  Lausanne  re-  X 
treat  in  the  shape  of  propagandist  legions  spreading  like  Huns 
and  Vandals  over  Europe,  and  able  too,  like  them,  to  beat  the 
standing  armies  of  order  and  civilization  in  pieces.  The  mis- 
givings which  he  expresses  in  his  letters  to  Lord  and  Lady 
Sheffield  —  his  friendship  with  whom  forms  so  interesting  a 
feature  in  his  biography — are  significant  of  the  yet  deeper 
change  which  was  soon  to  set  in  amid  wide  circles,  and  to  ally 
itself,  too  often  to  its  own  sad  disadvantage,  with  reaction. 
Meanwhile  it  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  sagacity  of  Gibbon,  as 
of  Hume,  that  they  early  foresaw,  and  from  the  opposite  region 
of  political  sympathy,  the  invincibility  of  the  great  Common- 
wealth of  the  West,  which  was  rising,  not  without  its  own  ear- 
lier elements  of  unbelief  and  disorganization,  to  prove,  and  in 
so  many  and  such  unexpected  ways,  a  bulwark  of  liberty  and  of 
Christian  faith  throughout  the  world. 

It  has  been  supposed  that  the  Deistic  movement,  the  history 
of  which  we  have  thus  endeavored  to  trace,  failed  as  an  intel- 
lectual process  by  the  development  of  scepticism,  which  thus 
turned  it  round  against  itself.*  But  this  development  was 
neither  so  considerable  nor  so  manifest  as  thus  to  operate. 
The  movement  failed  intellectually  through  exhaustion.  The 
assaults  had  been  repelled  and  the  ammunition  shot  away ;  and 
nothing  remained  but  to  raise  the  siege.  The  Church  of  Eng- 
land, though  sadly  feeble  and  worldly,  proved  stronger  than  had 
been  anticipated.  She  rose  above  her  disputes,  Arian  and  Ban- 
gorian,  and  presented  a  united  front  to  the  enemy,  from  Leslie 
on  the  extreme  right,  himself  a  Nonjuror,  to  Middleton  on  the 
extreme  left,  almost  excommunicated  as  a  freethinker.  Her 
greatest  names  on  this  field  equalled  themselves  on  every  other, 
and  one  on  this  alone  added  a  name  to  the  greatest  in  her  his- 
tory. Nor  were  the  Dissenters  less  united  with  the  Church  and 
with  themselves;  and  though  suffering  from  spiritual  blight 
and  doctrinal  coldness,  men  among  them,  like  Leland  and  Sam- 

*This  is  the  supposition  of  Lecliler,  whose  valuable  work  is  arranged 
on  this  principle,  but  who  fails,  I  think,  in  his  instances,  as  Dodwell  can- 
not be  granted  to  him,  nor  the  influence  of  Hume  allowed  to  have  acted 
so  widely  in  this  direction.  Bolingbroke  is  not  arranged  by  Lechlev  among 
the  sceptics,  and  Gibbon  is  not  noticed. 


86          UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY. 

uel  Chandler  and  Doddridge,  maintained  a  not  unequal  compe- 
tition with  all  but  the  greatest  in  the  Anglican  pale,  while, 
from  the  more  uncertain  verge  of  Nonconformity,  Hallet  and 
Foster  displayed  their  vigor  of  argument,  and  Lardner  rose  to 
an  uucontested  pre-eminence  in  learning.  The  best  works  of 
their  antagonists,  after  the  replies  made  to  them,  look  poor  and 
shallow,  and  hardly  anything  remains  in  Christianity  to  be 
struck  at  but  the  eternal  difficulties  of  reason  and  of  theology. 
Nor  did  the  Deists  fail  through  intellectual  weakness  alone. 
They  wanted  the  elements  of  moral  victory.  They  wanted  a 
creed,  a  worship,  a  polity,  a  tradition.  They  wanted  that  with- 
out which  success  is  nowhere  possible  in  the  moral  field,  and 
least  of  all  in  England — enthusiasm.  The  Reformation  was 
not  carried  without  men  that  would  go  to  the  stake,  nor  civil 
liberty  without  men  that  would  rush  to  the  field.  No  mere 
simplification  of  a  belief  has  ever  conquered,  unless  the  half  has 
burned  more  brightly  than  the  whole.  The  Deists  professed 
to  improve  religion,  but  they  were  without  visible  religion, 
without  contagion,  without  courage.  They  suffered  some  un- 
just and  unhappy  persecution ;  but  in  comparison  of  what  Pu- 
ritans, Covenanters,  Quakers,  and  even  Romanists  had  braved,  it 
was  the  fulness  of  religious  liberty.  They  dared  to  put  the 
watchwords  of  Tertullian  and  Lactantius  on  their  title-pages, 
but  within  were  too  often  innuendoes  and  salvoes,  and  dexterous 
conformities  to  the  faith  which  they  denied.  Hence,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  sincerity  with  which  they  pleaded,  and  with 
•which  one  or  two  of  them  (to  the  regret  of  many  Christians 
then,  and  of  all  now)  suffered,  they  did  not  make  on  the  public 
mind  the  impression  of  earnestness  and  resolve,  and  therefore 
they  lost  whatever  advantage  belonged  to  aggression  and  nov- 
elty. But  the  deepest  cause  of  their  failure  was  that  they  had 
not  faith  in  a  divine  mission,  such  as  was  still  found  on  the 
other  side.  This  was  a  superstition  which,  with  other  rem- 
nants of  traditional  religion,  they  excluded.  But  it  was  the 
deepest  element  of  strength  in  the  upholders  of  revelation. 
Some  of  them  may  have  opposed  the  Deists  from  love  to  an 
established  religion  ;  some  from  adherence  to  the  past ;  some 
from  mere  contempt  of  intellectual  inferiority.  But  that 
which  was  mightier  than  all,  and  kept  the  field,  even  amid 
the  decay  of  faith,  was  this  lingering  presence  of  it,  which  had 
power  with  God,  and,  by  a  law  of  his  making,  with  man  also. 
Thus  it  was  that  what  had  honored  God,  amid  depression  and 


ENGLISH   DEISM.  87 

darkness,  was  crowned  with  more  than  victory.  Not  only  was 
the  Deistic  wave  rolled  back  by  the  dikes  opposed  to  it,  but 
by  a  higher  influence  was  made  to  fertilize  the  recovered  soil. 
The  beleaguered  fortress  was  not  only  set  free,  but  in  its  lowest 
depths  was  opened  a  spring  of  living  water.  In  the  rise  of 
Methodism  and  other  great  impulses,  it  was  found  that  one  of 
the  most  derided  of  the  evangelic  miracles — the  descent  of  the 
angel  to  heal  stagnation  by  commotion  and  trouble — had  been 
repeated,  though  not  always  owned  by  those  who  had  waited 
for  it ;  and  in  the  brightening  energy  and  hopefulness  ere  long 
sent  forth  by  the  living  Spirit  of  God,  from  a  country  which 
had  thus  preserved  the  continuity  of  its  religious  history,  over 
every  branch  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  and  into  all  the  world, 
it  was  felt  that  the  weakness  of  Christianity  had  departed,  and 
that  a  more  heroic  age  had  begun. 


88         UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 


1 


LECTURE  IV. 

UNBELIEF  IN  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS. 

Causes  of  French  Unbelief.  — Persecution.  — Jansenism.  — Corruption  in 
Church  and  State. — Voltaire:  his  Connection  with  England;  Liter- 
ary Career. — Frederick  the  Great. — The  "  Encyclopedic. " — Jean  Calas 
and  Toleration. — Characteristics  of  Voltaire's  Attack  on  Christian- 
ity.— Ignorance  of  Scripture. — Insufficient  Account  of  the  Origin  and 
Success  of  Christianity. — Doubtful  Natural  Religion. — Hypocrisy  of 
his  last  Confession.— Rousseau. — The  Savoy  Vicar. — Character  of 
Jesus  Christ. — Letters  from  the  Mountain. — Concessions  to  Chris- 
tianity. —  Atheism.  —  La  Metti ie.—  Helvetius.  —  Diderot.—  D'Hol- 
bach. — Revolution. — Causes  of  Failure  of  Encyclopedism. — Concor- 
dat.— Chateaubriand's  "  GeuicdiiChri.«tianisine." — Fruitless  Strife  of 
Rome  and  Unbelief. — Service  of  French  Unbelief  to  England. 

THE  unbelief  which  had  failed  in  England  passed  over  into 
France,  there  to  work  other  results,  and  to  open  a  career  which 
is  not  yet  exhausted.  There  was  the  most  direct  connection,  as 
we  shall  see,  between  the  movement  in  the  one  country  and  in 
the  other,  and  the  principal  instrument  of  the  success  denied 
in  England  had  found  there  his  training  and  his  materials. 
But  had  not  the  condition  of  things  in  France,  both  in  the 
State  and  in  the  Church,  been  very  different,  neither  the  abili- 
ties of  Voltaire  and  his  associates,  nor  the  weapons  drawn  by 
them  from  their  English  armory,  could  have  dealt  such  a  blow 
to  the  Christian  faith,  and  accompanied  it  with  so  great  a  po- 
litical revolution.  Important  as  the  moral  elements  were  in 
the  English  struggle,  in  the  French  they  were  far  more  decisive  ; 
and  to  look  upon  this  great  passage  in  history  chiefly  as  a  the- 
ological debate  between  the  assailants  of  Christianity  and  its 
defenders  is  to  miss  its  spirit  and  all  its  most  serious  lessons. 

While  England  was  struggling  through  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury to  retain  and  develop  its  political  liberty,  France  was  sink- 
ing deeper  and  deeper  in  personal  despotism ;  and  when  at 
length  crushing  disasters  overwhelmed  the  proud  fabric  which 
Louis  XIV.  had  reared,  the  general  incompetency  and  misgov- 
ernment  of  those  who  succeeded  him  dispelled  the  last  illusions 
which  had  surrounded  arbitrary  power,  and  not  only  took  away 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.     89 

the  prop  which  a  strong  government  may  prove  to  a  national 
faith,  but  involved  that  faith  in  all  the  unpopularity  of  the  weak 
and  miserable  rulers  who  represented  it.  It  was  as  if  the  De- 
istical  controversy  had  come  in  England  in  the  reign  of  the  Stu- 
arts, and  not  in  the  happier  days  of  Anne  and  of  the  Georges. 
Still  more  ominous  of  evil  were  the  influences  that  had  presided 
in  France  over  the  history  of  the  Church.  The  long  struggle 
of  the  Reformation,  ended  by  the  Bartholomew  massacre  and 
the  conversion  of  Henry  IV.,  had  left  France  prevailingly 
Romish ;  and  in  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  in 
1685,  the  most  tremendous  blow  ever  dealt  to  a  nation's  spirit- 
ual life  had  been  inflicted,  driving  out  the  elite  of  the  Protes- 
tant middle  class,  and  reacting  upon  the  Church  of  Rome  itself, 
so  as  to  imprint  upon  it  a  character  of  narrowness  and  intoler- 
ance odious  to  many  within  its  pale  who  were  held  responsible 
for  that  outrage.  Not  only  was  the  Protestant  part  of  the 
population,  the  most  intelligently  Christian,  sadly  diminished 
when  the  attack  on  Christianity  began,  but  the  Romish  com- 
munion was  ill  at  ease,  and  charged  with  the  grave  scandal,  of 
which  Christianity  had  to  bear  the  burden.  Another  trouble 
had  arisen,  for  the  long  dispute  as  to  "Grace,  which,  in  the  days 
of  Pascal,  had  sought  to  make  the  French  Church  a  home  for 
the  doctrine  of  Augustine  and  of  Luther,  had  been  by  the  Papal 
chair  decided  against  the  Jansenists;  and  the  portion  of  the 
Romish  body  purest  in  life  and  doctrine  weakened  itself  by 
empty  protests  which  could  avail  nothing,  and  still  more  by  the 
attempt  in  1732  to  work  miracles  at  the  Church  of  St.  Medard 
in  Paris — an  attempt  which  revolted  the  sense  of  truth,  threw 
the  educated  mind  over  into  scepticism,  and  broke  up  also  the 
Jansenist  party  itself.  There  had,  no  doubt,  been  in  the  Romish 
communion  in  the  seventeenth  century  an  amount  of  indepen- 
dence, of  learning,  and  of  piety  never  witnessed  before  or  since. 
Its  greatest  preachers  and  controversialists  then  appeared ;  and 
in  their  sermons,  their  treatises,  and  their  contests  with  the  Re- 
formed, or  even  with  the  Jesuit  party  in  their  own  Church,  dis- 
played a  vigor  that  must  have  filled  the  nation  with  interest 
and  admiration.  But  Arnaud,  Fenelon,  Bossuet,  and  Massillon 
were  gone,  and  had  left  no  successors,  as  indeed  Protestant  op- 
position was  now  silent,  if  not  dead ;  and  how  poor  the  re- 
sources of  the  Romish  Church  were,  soon  appeared  in  the  re- 
plies made  to  the  leaders  of  unbelief,  which,  with  hardly  an  ex- 
ception, wanted  everything  of  the  logical  power,  the  Biblical 


90         UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

and  classical  knowledge,  and  even  the  wit  and  raillery,  which 
shone  in  the  combat  against  English  Deism.  Intellectual  pov- 
erty, however,  was  the  least  fault  of  this  hierarchy.  It  was  cor- 
rupt to  the  core,  the  clergy  in  many  cases  belonging  openly  to 
the  gay  world.  The  evils  of  the  monastic  system  were  fla- 
grant. The  Church  lands  were  oppressed  by  a  worse  serfdom 
than  those  of  the  feudal  nobles ;  the  tyranny  in  the  State  found 
in  that  of  the  Church  its  best  support.  Every  proposal  for  re- 
form was  met  by  the  sternest  censorship,  or  by  a  lettre  de  cachet 
consigning  to  the  Bastille.  It  was,  indeed,  quite  natural  that, 
among  the  clergy,  many  who  had  at  first  belonged  to  the  party 
of  repression  should,  with  the  progress  of  unbelief,  be  led  over 
to  adopt  its  liberal  creed;  but  then,  instead  of,  like  the  English 
Deists  who  had  belonged  to  the  sacred  order,  stepping  outside, 
they  allowed  themselves  to  maintain  a  secret,  and  in  some  cases 
open,  correspondence  with  the  Sceptics,  and  to  undermine  the 
faith  by  which  they  were  still  supported.  It  was  impossible  to 
save  from  great  and  terrible  convulsions  a  Church  and  a  people 
which  had  retained  so  little  of  the  preserving  salt  of  Christian 
faith  and  purity.  The  assailants  of  the  gospel  assailed  it  laden 
with  a  dead  weight  of  error,  of  superstition,  of  tyranny,  and  of 
worldliness,  which  it  could  not  long  bear  up  under ;  and  as  the 
people  before  whom  they  pleaded — with  a  mastery  in  literature 
and  a  daring  vigor  of  reforming  enterprise  to  which  English 
Deism  had  nothing  parallel — had  no  Bible  in  their  hands,  or 
Christian  examples  in  any  number  before  their  eyes,  or  effect- 
ual counter-pleading  sounded  in  their  ears,  it  is  not  wonderful 
that  they  should  at  last  have  violently  broken  away  from  a 
Christianity  which  they  could  neither  believe  nor  love,  and  have 
wandered  so  long  afterwards  in  the  very  shadow  of  death,  from 
which  it  cannot  be  said  that  they  have  yet  emerged.  This  sad 
and  monitory  history  is  what  we  have  now  rapidly  to  consider, 
while  we  also  keep  in  view  the  points  of  contrast  between  what 
was  prominent  in  the  struggle  of  the  eighteenth  century  and 
what  in  France  now  meets  the  eye  in  our  own. 

We  have  to   begin,  then,  with  the  name  of  Voltaire,  who 
overtops  every  one  besides  in  this  revolution,  and  is  in  some 

F  respects  the  most  remarkable  figure  in  the  history  of  unbelief. 
We  must  here  abandon  our  threefold  classification,  striking  out 
the  division  of  Pantheists,  as  none  such  appeared  in  the  French 
history,  and  adding  to  Deists  and  Sceptics  the  name  of  Athe- 

Msts,  which  alone  was  avowed  in  this  region.     The  stress  of  the 


UNBELIEF  IN  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.     91 

battle,  however,  is  here,  as  elsewhere,  borne  by  Deists  or  Scep- 
tics; for  the  Atheists  even  here  shun  the  light. 

I.  At  the  head  of  the  Deists,  or  rather  as  uniting  in  himself 
the  Deist  and  the  Sceptic,  is  Voltaire.  In  these  limits,  only  the 
briefest  notice  of  his  long  and  various  life  is  to  be  expected, 
and  exclusively  in  relation  to  this  subject.  Already  more  than 
a  third  part  of  his  life,  which  extended  from  1694  to  1778,  had 
passed  when,  in  1726,  being  then  in  his  thirty -second  year,  he 
canid  as  an  involuntary  exile  to  England.  His  character  was 
already  formed,  and  his  talents  were  recognized.  Educated  at 
the  Jesuit  College  in  Paris,  he  had  deserted  law  for  literature^ 
and  had  written  tragedies  and  other  "poems,  among  them  the 
epic  on  the  Wars  of  the  League,  which  he  had  begun  in  the 
Bastille,  whither,  in  mistaken  punishment  of  a  supposed  libel 
on  the  Regent,  he  had  been  sent.  In  the  fashionable  world  he 
was  as  much  at  home,  and  had,  among  many  other  high  per- 
sonages, become  acquainted  with  Lord  Bolingbroke,  who  then 
passed  an  interval  of  his  troubled  life  on  his  estates  in  Tou- 
raine,  and  had,  in  1722,  nursed  Voltaire  during  an  attack  of 
small-pox.*  Thus  introduced  into  England,  Voltaire  knew  all 
that  was  foremost  in  literature.  He  met  Pope,  Congreve,  arid 
Gay,  and  corresponded  with  Swift.  He  conversed  with  Clarke 
and  Berkeley.  He  mastered  the  Newtonian  astronomy  and  the 
philosophy  of  Locke ;  and  studied  the  English  poets  from 
Shakespeare  downwards.  He  actually  composed  in  English 
prose  a  portion  of  his  own  tragedy  of  "  Brutus,"  and  for  more 
than  two  years  studied  the  language  so  incessantly  that,  as  he 
says,  he  forgot  to  think  in  his  own.f  The  result  was  highly 
favorable  to  his  mental  culture  and  enlargement ;  but,  unhap- 
pily, the  influence  of  Bolingbroke  made  it  disastrous  in  its  bear- 
ing on  religious  opinion  and  conviction.  There  is  the  clearest 
evidence  that  long  before  this  Voltaire  had  sunk  into  all  the 
moral  dissoluteness  of  the.  period  of  the  Regency  ;  but  there  is 
no  evidence  of  formed  sceptical  opinions.  These,  however,  his 
visit  to  England  brought  him ;  and  instead  of  the  best  thing  in 

*  Metrical  Epistle  to  De  Gervasy,  the  physician  who  had  treated  him  for 
small-pox  in  1722.  Voltaire  knew  Bolingbroke  at  least  by  this  time 
("  (Euvres  de  Voltaire,"  Amsterdam,  1752,  vol.  vi.,  p.  196). 

t  The  authority  for  these  statements  is  in  the  "Discourse  on  Tragedy" 
prefixed  to  "Brutus"  and  dedicated  to  Bolingbroke  ("CEuvres  de  Vol- 
taire," Amsterdam,  1738,  vol.  ii.,  p.  23 1). 


92          UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

X4,he  country,  he  took  the  worst.  The  debate  on  prophecy  raised 
by  Collins  was  in  full  career;  that  on  miracles  by  Woolston 
was  soon  to  begin.  These  were  matter  of  universal  talk ;  and 
Bolingbroke,  who  was  then  in  England,  would  doubtless  give 
him  his  own  impressions  of  all  that  was  taking  place.  This 
must  also  have  been  the  case  with  English  liberty ;  for  though 
Voltaire  admired  this,  and  in  regard  to  toleration  as  much  as 
civil  rights,  in  contrast  with  the  political  system  of  France,  he 

,*  received  no  idea  of  its  connection  with  Puritanism  and  with 

I  moral  forces.  The  letters  which  he  soon  after  published  on 
England,  while  handling  the  subject  of  religion,  are  fresh  and 
impartial  between  sect  and  sect;  but  there  is  already  a  tone 
not  only  of  coldness,  but  of  ridicule,  which  shows  the  malignant 
influence  of  indifference  and  prejudice.  The  Deists  are  not, 
indeed,  mentioned  in  that  work ;  but  they  are  afterwards — To- 
land,  Collins,  Chubb,  and  others ;  above  all,  Bolingbroke — and 

"V-their  works  are  ransacked  for  arguments  against  revelation, 
while  not  one  of  the  numberless  replies  to  them  is  ever  noticed. 

*^  This  is  quite  in  keeping  with  Voltaire's  character.  It  may  not 
have  been  deliberate  suppression  ;  but  his  controversial  life  was 
too  rarely,  and  only  as  by  accident,  in  harmony  with  the  rule 
"  Audi  alteram  partem."  It  was  not  till  he  was  turned  of  sev- 
enty that,  in  a  letter  to  D'Alembert,  he  mentions  that  he  had 
just  read  Grotius.* 

Much  of  the  succeeding  history  of  Voltaire  must  be  passed 
over,  such  as  his  connection  with  Madame  du  Chatelet,  which, 
though  a  scandal,  was  in  other  respects  a  recovery ;  and  his  in- 
tercourse with  Frederick  the  Great,  in  which,  perhaps,  he  sinks 

~/~  to  the  lowest  depth  in  his  whole  career,  ending  his  residence  at 
Berlin  in  a  violent  quarrel,  followed  by  something  like  recon- 
ciliation and  renewed  correspondence  full  of  exalted  professions, 
while  all  the  while  he  kept  in  his  desk  a  monstrous  libel  against 
the  king,  full  of  such  insults  as,  had  it  then  been  published, 
must  have  swept  away  every  trace  of  friendship.  To  this  want 
of  solid  and  trustworthy  qualities  he  owed  in  part  his  exclusion 
s  from  the  circles  where  his  commanding  abilities  still  gave  him 
influence,  and  his  isolation  during  the  last  twenty  years  of  his 


*  Correspondence  with  D'Alembert,  date  5th  April,  1765  :  "  I  must  tell 
you  I  have  iust  read  Grotius's  'De  Veritate.'  I  am  astonished  at  the 
reputation  of  that  man.  I  hardly  know  a  more  foolish  book"  ("OEuvres 
'de  Voltaire,"  Geneva  edition,  vof.  xlii.,  p.  204). 


UNBELIEF   IN   FRANCE.— THE    ENCYCLOPEDISTS.      93 

life.  This  was  the  shade  upon  his  retreat  at  Ferney,  on  the 
confines  of  France  and  Switzerland,  whence  he  exerted  a  kind 
of  literary  dictatorship  in  Europe. 

His  earlier  works  had  mostly  ranked  under  the  head  of  poe- 
try, epic  and  dramatic ;  history,  such  as  his  greatest,  "  The  Age 
of  Louis  XIV.,"  and  his  more  extensive  "  General  History  from 
Charlemagne ;"  with  numberless  smaller  pieces,  belonging  chief- 
ly to  the  department  of  criticism.     In  these  we  may  say  that 
the  distinctive  stamp  of  Voltaire  is  not  found,  save  in  the  range 
of  knowledge  and  felicity  of  expression  which  have  been  ac- 
knowledged by  all.     But  the  peculiar  features  of  his  thinking 
and  style  come  out  most  strikingly  in  the  works  of  his  last 
thirty  years,  roused  up  in  the  acts  of  his  avowed  conflict  with 
Christianity,  but  also  tinging  largely  the  fiction  and  the  cor- 
respondence drawn  into  this  more  serious  enterprise.     Painful 
as  this  region  is  to  a  Christian,  and  often  also  to  a  moralist,  the 
literary  power  is  at  its  highest.     Here  are  mingled  exposition, 
reasoning,  sarcasm,  anecdote,  exhaustless  faculty  of  invention, 
exaggeration,  and  mocking  ridicule,  all  kept  within  classic  rule, 
and  winged  with  a  classic  art,  though  indeed  of  a  French  type, 
which  has  never  been  surpassed.     The  one  element  wantitg  is 
truth,  though  there  is  as  much  of  the  look  of  it  as  arose  from 
genuine  hatred  of  Rome,  and,  alas!  also  dislike  of  real  Christi- 
anity.    But  the    simplicity  which  dwells  only  with  nature  is 
wanting;    and  the   deep   humor  of  Luther  and  transcendent 
pathos  of  Pascal  are  denied.     The  pathos  of  Voltaire  is  mostly 
in  his  tragedies.     The  sorrows  of  humanity,  though  they  have 
some  place,  have,  with  one  or  two  honorable  exceptions,  a  sub- 
ordinate one,  in  this  crusade.     Of  this  vast  and  restless  activity, 
the  chief  centre  was  the  "  Encyclopedic,"  which  marked  an  era 
in  French   literature.     This  work  was   not  begun   as  a  mere 
propagandist  organ,  but  as  a  bona  fide  repository  of  universal 
knowledge.     But  as  many,  if  not  most,  of  the  contributors  be- 
longed to  the  school  of  which  Voltaire  was  rising  to  be  the  rec- 
ognized head,  it  naturally  became  more  and  more  the  vehicle 
of  their  opinions.     It  was  started  in  1751,  when  Voltaire  was 
in  Berlin ;  and  its  two  editors  were  Diderot  and  D'Alcmbert, 
the  former,  who  held  on  to  the  end,  having  charge  of  literature 
and  art,  and  the  latter  of  science  and  philosophy,  while  many 
articles  on  theology  and  morals  were  contributed  by  learned 
abbes  and  professors  belonging  to  the  more  advanced  schools, 
such  as  the  Abbe  Mallet,  the  Abbe  Morellet,  the  Abbe  Yvon, 


94          UNBELIEF   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  . 

and  others.  It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  "  Ency- 
yv^clopedie"  preached  atheism,  or  even  open  disloyalty  to  Christ. 
On  the  contrary,  the  article  "  Athee,"  furnished  by  M.  Formey, 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Prussia,  holds  atheism  to  be  a  State 
crime  punishable  with  death;  while  that  on  "Jesus -Christ" 
4eclares  "  that,  to  speak  rigorously,  Jesus  Christ  was  not  a  phi- 
losopher: he  was  a  God."  These  and  many  similar  passauvs 
are  but  the  "tares  among  the  wheat,"  of  which  Voltaire  some- 
times in  his  letters  to  D'Alembert  complains,  exhorting  him 
"  to  cultivate  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord ;"  and  we  can  see  how 
effectually  it  is  cultivated,  by  dwelling  on  the  difficulties  of 
Christianity,  insinuating  doubts  not  only  of  Romish  but  of  all 
Christian  doctrine,  putting  forward  the  scandals  and  controver- 
sies of  the  Christian  Church,  and  exalting  the  light,  clearness,  and 
/^opening  millennium  of  reason.  Much  of  this  great  work  was, 
^  no  doubt,  unaffected  by  special  unbelief;  but  its  purely  scien- 
(  title  articles  were  like  solid  walls  that  received  the  inscriptions 
of  unbelief,  or  gave  back  its  mocking  voice  within.  The  pub- 
lication of  the  "  Encyclopedic  "  fell  into  two  periods.  Of  its 
seventeen  volumes  the  first  seven,  from  1751  to  1757,  ran  on 
under  privilege  of  the  king  in  Paris ;  but,  offence  having  been 
taken,  the  remaining  ten  volumes  were  prepared  and  published 
in  one  issue,  professedly  at  Neufchatel,  but  really  in  Paris,  in 
1765,  and  without  any  editor's  name,  save  in  asterisks — those 
of  Diderot  and  D'Alembert,  which  had  stood  upon  the  first 
issue,  being  concealed.*  Before  this  second  part  of  the  work 
had  been  undertaken,  Voltaire  had  become  a  voluminous  con- 
tributor to  it,  but  chiefly  on  questions  of  literature  and  taste. 
He  had  also,  in  1752,  while  still  at  Potsdam,  begun  a  Diction- 
ary of  his  own,  more  free;  and  added  in  1770  "Questions  on 
the  Encyclopedic,"  filling  up  gaps  in  that  publication.  These, 
with  his  actual  contributions,  make  the  work  known  as  his 
"  Philosophical  Dictionary."  In  these  papers  his  most  unre- 
strained hostility  to  Christianity  comes  out,  though  it  must  be 
allowed  that,  on  purely  literary  and  historical  subjects,  his  re- 
marks are  often  just  and  instructive.  To  the  same  period  be- 
long his  "  Philosophical  Dialogues,"  and  most  of  his  philosoph- 


*  These  statements  I  make  from  a  personal  examination  of  the  original 
edition  in  the  National  Library  at  Paris.  For  the  misleading  statement 
as  to  the  publication  at  Neufchatel,  I  rest  on  the  authority  of  Mr.  Morley, 
in  his  ''Life  of  Diderot." 


UNBELIEF   IX   FRANCE.— THE   ENCYCLOPEDISTS,     y-, 

ical  romances,  sucli  as  "  Candide,"  the  most  lively  and  offensive 
of  them  all,  written  to  ridicule  the  thesis  of  Leibnitz,  that  this 
is  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds.  To  the  same  period  is  to  be 
referred  the  saying,  which  both  Condorcet  and  Strauss  accept 
as  genuine,  "Je  snis  las  de  lour  entendre  repeter  que  douze 
homines  out  suffit  pour  etablir  le  christianisme,  et  j'ai  envie  de 
leur  prouver  quil  n'en  faut  q'un  pour  le  detruire."*  In  a  letter 
to  I/Alembert  he  starts  the  same  idea,  only  asking  a  confeder- 
acy of  five  or  six  to  prevail  at  successive  points  in  the  contest. j- 
These  boasts  only  prove  now  the  vitality  of  that  religion,  whose 
weakness  is  stronger  than  men. 

It  would  have  been  impossible,  however,  for  Voltaire  to  have 
wielded  the  mighty  influence  which  gathered  around  his  name, 
had  there  not  been  in  him  elements  of  earnestness  capable  of 
being  roused  np  into  strong  action,  and  which  visibly  connected 
themselves  with  human  well-being.  In  this  he  had  a  career 
which  the  English  Deists  wanted,  and  which,  to  his  honor,  he' 
embraced,  in  making  himself  the  reformer  of  the  civil  law,  and 
the  antagonist  of  intolerance  and  cruelty  under  the  name  of  re- 
ligion. There  were  three  remarkable  cases  in  which,  by  cour- 
ageous and  sustained  efforts,  he  stirred  np  and  led  the  public 
feeling  of  France  and  of  Europe  so  as  to  gain  his  cause.  The 
first  was  that  of  Jean  Calas,  in  Toulouse,  in  1762,  a  Protestant 
merchant,  who,  for  the  supposed  murder  of  a  son  to  hinder  him 
from  going  over  to  Rome — though  entirely  innocent — had,  with 
his  whole  family,  shared  the  tortures  of  the  rack,  and  had  then 
himself  been  broken  on  the  wheel  and  burned  to  ashes.  His 
widow  interested  Voltaire  in  the  case,  and  after  a  three  years' 
struggle  he  prevailed  over  fanaticism,  so  that  the  authorities  of 
Toulouse  were  visited  with  the  royal  displeasure.  The  second 
case — that  of  a  family  of  the  name  of  Sirven,  in  the  same 
neighborhood — so  greatly  resembled  that  of  Calas  as  to  require 
no  further  notice ;  and  the  third  was  that  of  two  young  gentle- 
men of  family  in  Abbeville,  in  the  north  of  France,  who  for 
an  alleged  insult  to  a  crucifix,  and  to  a  religious  procession, 

*  "I  am  weary  of  hearing  them  repent  that  twelve  men  were  enough  to 
establish  Christianity,  and  I  long  to  prove  to  them  that  it  needs  but  one  to 
destroy  it"  (Coudorcet's  "Vie  de  Voltaire,"  (Euvres,  Geneva  edition, 
vol.  xxxiv.,  p.  109.  Strauss,  "  Voltaire,"  third  edition,  p.  282). 

t  The  idea  is  thrown  out  in  regard  to  the  election  of  Diderot  to  the 
Academy  ;  but  that  is  onlv  a  means  to  the  greater  end  ("  Correspondancc," 
July  24/1700,  vol.  xlii..  p.  78). 


96          UNBELIEF   IN   THE    EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY. 

.  and  other  marks  of  irreverence,  had  been  sentenced  to  torture 
^  and  death,  though  one  escaped  by  flight,  and  the  other  only 
was  executed.  This  barbarous  vengeance  for  purely  religious 
offences  Voltaire  denounced  with  the  utmost  energy,  but  only 
succeeded  in  moving  public  opinion,  without  changing  in  this 
case  the  sentence.  These  acts  of  Voltaire's  life  provoke  the 
exclamation,  "  0  si  sic  omniaf"  They  teach  us  also  to  make 
just  allowance  even  for  his  mournful  recoil  from  a  Christianity 
associated  with  such  horrors,  and  lead  us  to  see  what  so  impure 
a  Christianity  had  to  suffer  in  the  fires  of  revolution,  before 
dross  like  this  could  have  even  a  chance  of  being  purged  away. 
It  is  interesting  to  see  how  Voltaire,  as  the  apostle  of  toleration, 
makes  out  in  his  pleading  a  better  case  for  Christianity  than  at 
any  other  time.  The  Old  and  New  Testaments  become  sudden- 
ly replete,  as  he  cites  them,  with  mildness  and  mercy ;  and  even 
Athanasius  and  Bernard  preach  lessons  of  good-will  and  broth- 
erhood. ' 

It  is  necessary  here  to  take  some  account  of  the  Propagandist 
literature,  which,  with  many  repetitions  and  not  a  few  contra- 
dictions, marks  the  final  period  of  Voltaire's  life.  We  shall 
separate  all  that  is  purely  anti- Romish,  or  directed  against 
abuses  of  Romanism,  and  shall  limit  our  view  to  what  is  hos- 
tile to  Christianity  in  general,  or  even  to  natural  religion.  The 
(exceptions  which  may  be  taken  to  Voltaire's  judgment  of 
Christianit^> I  endeavor  to  put  into  the  most  moderate  form 
consistent  with  truth, 

1.  There  is,  then,  first  of  all,  in  this  literature  an  unaccount- 
able ignorance  of  the  literary  history  and  contents  of  the  Bible, 
and  unfairness  in  dealing  with  it.  In  his  article  "  Evangile," 
in  his  "  Dictionnaire,"  he  says,  "  It  is  a  constant  truth,  whatever 
»  Abbadie  may  say,  that  none  of  the  first  fathers  of  the  Church, 
to  Ircn;eiis  inclusive,  cites  a  single  passage  of  the  four  Gospels 
which  we  know."  Now,  without  arguing  the  point  as  to  ear- 
lier fathers,  the  citations  of  Irenseus  are  universally  acknowl- 
edged ;  and  even  his  reasons,  fanciful  enough,  why  there  could 
be  only  four  Gospels,  were  a  commonplace  of  Church  history. 
He  also  gives  as  an  example  of  the  fathers  quoting  apocryphal 
Gospels,  while  neglecting  the  true,  a  saying  of  our  Lord  cited 
by  Clement,  which  we  know  was  in  the  Gospel  according  to 
the  Egyptians.  Voltaire  does  not  distinguish  which  Clement 
he  means,  of  Rome,  or  of  Alexandria.  Had  Voltaire  studied 


UNBELIEF  IN  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.     97 

the  subject  at  all,  he  would  have  found  that  the  second  epistle 
ascribed  to  Clement  of  Rome  was  rejected  by  all  the  best 
scholars,  and  that  Clement  of  Alexandria  expressly  distinguish- 
es the  saying  as  not  in  the  four  Gospels.*  Wholly  ignorant 
of  Celsus,"  he  speaks  as  if  the  Gospels  were  hardly  known  to 
the  pagans  till  the  time  of  Diocletian.  Again,  in  his  "Dia- 
logues''! he  speaks  of  "the  fanatic  who  redacted  the  Epistles 
of  Paul,"  quoting  a  passage  from  2d  Thessalonians ;  but  he 
might  have  known  that  Paul's  Epistles  were  not  thus  to  be 
summarily  disposed  of,  since  even  the  Tubingen  school  in  our 
days  (and  the  evidence  was  a  century  ago  the  same)  admit  the 
first  four  from  the  Romans  onward,  and  Renan  grants  that  tne 
Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians  are  unjustly,  and  on  slight  grounds,  -'' 
denied  to  Paul.  Along  with  this  scepticism  as  to  the  Bible, 
Voltaire  accepts  other  ancient  books  with  little  incredulity. 
"  Sanchoniathon  lived  certainly  before  the  time  when  we  place 
Moses."  J  So  also  he  accepts  the  "  Zend-avesta,"  as  proving  that 
the  Jews  derived  their  doctrine  of  angels  from  the  Persians,  in 
the  days  of  the  Captivity,  though  he  says  of  this  very  book 
that  one  "  cannot  read  two  pages  of  the  abominable  trash  as- 
cribed  to  this  Zoroaster  without  having  compassion  on  human 
nature."  §  There  is  also  wonderful  ignorance  of  Bible  facts. 
He  goes  so  far  in  one  of  his  "Dialogues"  ||  as  to  say  that  Jesus 
"  could  neither  read  nor  write ;"  though,  if  the  history  be 
worth  anything,  the  appeals  of  Jesus  to  the  Old  Testament  set 
aside  the'allegation.  In  his  "Pierre."  he  makes  Peter  defend 
himself  before  Paul  against  the  charge,  not  of  withdrawing 
from  the  Gentiles,  but  of  eating  with  them  ;  and  he  brings  in 
Peter's  vision  of  the  sheet  as  a  part  of  his  defence,  then  and 
there,  in  Antioch,  whereas  it  had  been  adduced  long  before, 
and  to  a  different  audience,  in  Jerusalem.  Again,  he  blames 
"Paul"  for  circumcising  Timothy,  after  he  had  written  to  the 
Galatians,  "  If  ye  be  circumcised,  Christ  shall  profit  you  noth- 
ing," whereas  Timothy  was  circumcised  some  time  before  the 
Epistle  was  written.  Whoever  will  follow  Voltaire  in  matters 
of  Scripture  fact,  and  correct  him,  has  work  on  hand.  He 
should  have  remembered  that  higher  interests  were  here  at 
stake  than  in  the  process  of  Jean  Calas,  where  the  necessity 
of  proof  kept  him  accurate.  Who  can  calculate  the  effect  of 


*  Clem.  Alex.,  "  Strom.,"  iii.,  §  93.     t  II.,  p.  15.     %  Article  "Adam." 
§  Articles  "  Ange  "  and  "  Zoroastre."  II  II.,  p.  1G2. 


98         UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURV. 

such  recklessness  in  a  country  where  the  Bible  is  a  rare  book, 
and  where  such  a  writer  can  make  any  assertion  current? 

2.  It  is  to  be  said,  secondly,  that  Voltaire's  scheme  of  Chris- 
tianity, including  his  theory  of  its  success  and  influence,  is  in- 
coherent. It  is  hard,  indeed,  to  keep  him  to  any  one  line ;  but 
perhaps  the  most  elaborate  of  his  attempts  is  in  the  long  essay 
"  Dieu  et  les  Hommes."  *  Here  he  teaches  that  Jesus  was  a 
Jewish  moralist,  a  "rustic  Socrates,"  "a  well-meaning  enthu- 
y.siast,  a  good  man,  who  had  the  weakness  to  wish  to  be  spoken 
'  of,  and  who  did  not  love  the  priests  of  his  day."  f  He  never 
thought  of  founding  the  Christian  sect,  but  lived  and  died  an 
orthodox  Jew,  preaching  only  love  to  God  and  men.  Who, 
then,  founded  it  ?  None  of  his  disciples ;  for  they  too,  even 
Paul,  save  where  he  contradicts  himself,  keep  within  the  limits 
of  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  fourth  Gospel  is  not  an  early 
Christian  writing.  Where,  then,  did  this  foundling  religion, 
cast  adrift  by  its  author,  find  a  home,  an  education,  and  a  sec- 
ond and  worse  birth?  In  Alexandria;  but  when  or  by  what 
new  apostles  transformed,  Voltaire  docs  not  show.  This  the- 
ory, running  down  from  Bolingbroke  to  Strauss,  though  disa- 
,  greeing  with  them  both  as  to  Paul  —  a  theory  which  makes 
r**  Plato  the  real  father  of  Christianity,  and  Philo  its  unconscious 
godfather — is  contradicted  at  every  point — by  the  absence  of 
sufficiently  evangelic  elements  in  Plato;  by  the  presence  of 
alleged  Platonic  elements  from  the  beginning  in  Christianity, 
as  reflected  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels;  by  the  existence  of  an 
early  Christian  theology  in  declared  separation  from  Platonism, 
as  in  Justin  Martyr;  and  by  the  antipathy  of  the  New-Pla- 
tonists  to  distinctive  Christianity.  How  Platonism  should 
condescend  to  the  name  of  a  rejected  and  crucified  Jewish 
rabbi,  or  how  his  disciples,  keeping  for  a  generation  to  strictly 
Jewish  paths,  should  then  transform  his  doctrine  into  its  op- 
posite, is  left  wholly  unexplained,  and  still  less  is  the  success 
of  the  attempt  accounted  for.  Voltaire,  indeed,  brings  in,  like 
Gibbon  and  Renan,  the  belief  in  a  millennium  ;  but  this  had 
nothing  specially  Platonic,  as  the  most  Platonizing  minds  in 
the  Church  were  most  averse  to  it ;  and  hence  Voltaire,  al- 
most laying  this  aside,  grants  that  the  belief  of  a  resurrection 

,*  "  Dieu  et  les  Hommes,"  vol.  xx.,  p.  1-154,  Geneva  edition. 
t  Ibid.,  p.  110,  p.  102. 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE   ENCYCLOPEDISTS.     99 

connected  with  it  is  revolting.*  There  really  then  remains 
nothing;  and  Voltaire,  who  knew  enough  of  crowned  heads 
to  understand  that  Constantine  did  not  profess  the  faith  of 
Christ  through  Platonism,  or  sense  of  the  apparent  end  of  the  , 
world,  can  only  say  that  he  was  bought  over,  and  that  "  the  X^ 
money  of  the  Christians  made  him  emperor."  f  The  success 
of  Christianity  is  thus  for  no  one  a  harder  problem  than  for 
Voltaire.  The  doctrine  is  odious,  and  the  morality  common- 
place ;  since  every  lawgiver  must  enjoin  virtue,  "  every  religion," 
says  he,  "  has  said  as  much  about  it  as  Jesus." J  This  falls 
below  Gibbon,  who  makes  Christian  morality  a  cause  of  suc- 
cess; and  the  question  recurs,  how  a  religion,  with  so  little 
pith  and  substance,  made  its  way.  This  shows  how  little,  in 
the  deepest  sense,  Voltaire  was  a  great  historian.  He  is  daz- 
zled by  the  grand  empires  of  China,  India,  and  Western  Asia; 
and  the  Jews  are  in  comparison  a  race  of  brigands  and  slaves. 
Jesus  comes  and  is  equally  weak.  "Do  you  charge  God, with 
being  made  man  in  vain,  with  having  raised  the  dead,  only  to 
be  hanged  (pe/ic/w)?"§  Voltaire  has  thus  no  eye  for  Pascal's  . 
greatness  of  the  third  order,  for  Milton's  "unresistible  might 
of  weakness,"  for  "  the  corn  of  wheat  that  falls  into  the  ground 
and  dies  so  as  to  bring  forth  much  fruit."  And  yet,  while 
reducing  Christ  to  a  pale  and  ineffectual  moralist,  let  us  do 
Voltaire  the  justice  of  acknowledging  that  he  thus  liberates 
himself  from  the  charge  of  personal  rancor  against  him.  As 
Christ  is  not  the  author  of  Christianity,  Voltaire,  though  some- 
times permitting  himself  to  depreciate  him  as  fanatically  ex- 
pecting to  come  in  the  clouds,  or  weakly  sweating  blood,  still 
absolves  him  from  the  crimes  done  in  his  name.  This  is  one 
of  the  reasons  why  I  agree  with  Strauss,  that  the  well-known 
watch \vordj^crasez  F Infame^>w\nch  also  is  connected  with 
feminine  pronouns,  does  nor  refer  to  Jesus  personally,  but  to 
superstition,  or  to  the  Christian  Church  as  an  embodiment  of 
it.  There  is  enough,  that  is  violent  and  even  virulent,  to  make 
us  thankful  to  be  able,  conscientiously,  to  grant  such  an  abate- 
ment ;  though,  no  doubt,  Voltaire  included  in  his  "  Infarne " 
much  that  belonged  to  the  Saviour,  albeit  darkened  in  his  fol- 
lowers by  human  evil.  Even  against  the  Christian  Church 
Voltaire  sinned;  for,  with  all  her  faults,  as  every  negative 

*  "  Dieu  et  les  Homines,"  vol.  xx..  p.  123,  Geneva  edition. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  123.  }  "  Dialogues,"  ii.  G5.  §  Ibid.,  p.  2!. 


100       UNBELIEF   IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

thinker  of  the  present  day  that  is  worth  arguing  with  will 
own,  the  Christian  Church  has  familiarized  society  with  ideas 
X  of  purity,  tenderness,  and  self-sacrifice,  before  absent,  and  dif- 
fused a  sense  of  truth  and  right,  such  as  Voltaire  himself  could 
appeal  to  against  her,  unknown  in  ancient  Greece  and  Rome.* 

3.  As  a   third  and  last  exception  to  Voltaire's  scheme,  as 

opposed  to  Christianity,  I  mention  his  scanty  and  doubtful  rec- 

ognition of  natural  religion.     The  question  here  comes  up,  and 

one  which  it  is  not  easy  to   decide,  whether  Voltaire,  in  his 

*  deepest  sense,  is  a  theist  or  a  sceptic.     A  theist  of  the  style  of 

Lord  Herbert  he  certainly  is  not,  as  the  question  of  worship 

would  never  have  been  made  a  separate  point  by  him,  but  set 

forth  as  conformity  with  existing  rites,  or  more  probably  be 

resolved  into  the  practice  of  virtue  ;  and,  further,  the  question 

of  repentance  being  a  satisfaction  for  sin,  is  hardly,  if  at  all, 

raised,  as  sin  against  God  and  repentance  have  hardly  a  place 

~  in  Voltaire's    voluminous   writings.     We    come    then    to    the 

•»  Kantian   triad  —  God,  Virtue,  and  Immortality.     Certainly,  if 

Voltaire  holds  any  one  of  those  firmly,  it  is  the  first  ;  and  yet 

here  there  are  difficulties.     In  spite  of  his  sounding  line, 

4  'Si  Dieu  n'existait  pas,  il  faudrait  1'inventer," 

and  many  earnest  and  eloquent  pleadings  for  a  designing  mind 
against  those  who  denied  final  causes,  there  are  shades  of  un- 
certainty that  trouble  the  horizon.  All  along  he  seems  to  have 
^  held  the  view  of  Bolingbroke  that  we  cannot  rise  to  the  attri- 
butes of  God  from  his  works.  This  appears  in  his  first  "  Traite 
de  Metaphysique,"  written  for  the  instruction  of  Madame  du 
Chatelet,  where  he  gets  rid  of  objections  to  the  existence  of 
God  by  pleading  this  ignorance  of  bis  character;!  and  in  one 
of  his  later  works  (article  "  Dieu  "  in  his  "  Dictionnaire  ")  he 
almost  seems  to  carry  this  so  far  as  to  affect  the  argument  from 
design  itself,  ridiculing  the  idea  by  supposing  that  a  mole,  see- 
ing a  garden-house,  might  thus  conclude  that  it  was  put  up  by 
an  immense  mole,  or  a  may-fly  infer,  in  like  manner,  a  gifted 
may-fly.  He  elsewhere  carries  this  further  by  imagining  that 
rats,  finding  a  lodgment  in  the  timbers  of  a  ship,  might  be 

*  For  the  phrase  Ecrasez  VInfdme,  see  the  correspondence  with  D'Aleni- 
bert,  passim.  The  reasoning  of  Strauss  is  in  his  "  Voltaire,"  p.  280,  281. 
Strauss  is  not  here  original. 

t  Vol.  xxxii.,  p.  49<>. 


< 


UNBELIEF  IN  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.  101 

equally  warranted  to  conclude  that  it  was  built  and  sent  to  sea 
for  their  benefit.*  This  may  be  only  one  of  the  extravagances 
of  his  ridicule,  but  any  theism  that  rejected  the  analogy  be- 
tween man's  highest  nature  and  God,  necessarily  reposed  on 
unsafe  foundations.  With  regard  to  virtue,  the  downward 
tendency  is  still  more  visible.  Rejecting  the  view  of  liberty 
which  he  had  defended  in  his  earlier  correspondence  with 
Frederick  the  Great,  he  adopts  not  philosophical  necessity,  as 
it  has  been  held  by  many  great  philosophers  and  theologians, 
but  something  like  fatalism,  as  is  plain  from  these  words  in  his  X 
article  "  Destin :"  "  We  know  well  that  it  depends  no  more  on 
us  to  have  much  merit  and  great  talents  than  to  have  well-set 
hair  and  fine  hands."  "  1  have  necessarily  the  passion  to  write 
this,  you  the  passion  to  condemn  it ;  we  are  both  equally  fools, 
equally  the  playthings  of  destiny."  Voltaire  would  thus  unsay 
all  his  own  reproaches  against  the  Bible,  as  having  any  absolute 
worth.  In  the  article  "  Identite,"  he  throws  doubt  on  whether 
man  can  be  punished  hereafter  for  what  he  has  forgotten ;  thus 
excluding  the  idea  of  responsibility  as  cleaving  to  the  agent  not  ^, 
only  here  (which  he  grants  under  human  government),  but 
hereafter  (under  divine),  which  he  doubts  or  denies.  This 
leads  us  to  the  third  point — Immortality,  where  he  is,  if  possi- 
ble, still  more  unsatisfactory.  Though  he  nowhere  pleads 
strongly  for  it,  he  regards  it  as  a  sublime  thing  for  the  soul  of 
man  to  hope  for  conjunction  with  the  Eternal  Being ;  but  else- 
where he  almost  scouts  the  idea  of  it  surviving  the  body. 
"  When  I  am  asked  if  after  death  these  faculties  subsist,  I  am 
almost  tempted  to  ask  in  turn,  if  the  song  of  the  nightingale  ^ 
subsists  when  the  bird  has  been  devoured  by  an  eagle."  f 
These  doubts  as  to  immortality  Condorcet,  his  first  biographer, 
admits  in  almost  the  closing  passage  of  his  Memoir  ;J  and 
Strauss,  who  has  admitted  also  the  darkness  that  is  left  by  him 
on  the  moral  character  of  God,  and  the  tendency  of  his  system 
to  fatalism,  sees  in  a  letter  to  Madame  du  Deffand,  six  years  be- 

*  I  regret  that  I  have  lost  the  reference  to  this  passage,  and  in  the 
voluminous  writings  of  Voltaire  cannot  recover  it. 
"  Dialogues,"  ii.,  p.  97. 

t  The  words  of  Condorcet  are  these:  "  He  remained  in  an  almost  ab- 
solute uncertainty  as  to  the  spirituality  of  the  soul,  and  even  its  permanence 
after  the  body  ;  but  as  he  believed  this  last  opinion  useful,  like  that  of  the 
existence  of  God,  he  rarely  allowed  himself  to  show  his  doubts,  arid  al- 
most always  insisted  more  on  the  proofs  than  the  objections  "  (vol.  xxxiv., 


X~  » 


102       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

fore  his  death,  which  touches  on  immortality,  "  that  mixture  of 
pessimism,  scepticism,  and  irony  that  marks  the  peculiar  stamp 
of  his  mind  and  character."  * 

It  is  with  profound  regret  that  one  sees  Voltaire  thus  relax- 
y  ing  his  hold  on  those  truths  which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  all 
s  religion,  and  to  which,  had  his  testimony  been  continued,  it 
might,  in  the  country  where  his  influence  was  greatest,  have 
assisted  escape  from  his  other  fatal  errors.  How  little  he  him- 
v  self  was  contented  with  his  own  results  appears  in  the  gloom 
shed  over  his  later  writings.  It  is  not  in  "  Candide  "  alone,  but 
in  others  of  them,  that  this  sadness  comes  to  light.  Thus,  in 
his  dialogue  "  Les  Louanges  de  Dieu,"  the  doubter  almost  car- 
ries it  over  the  adorer — "  Strike  out  a  few  sages,  and  the  crowd 
of  human  beings  is  nothing  but  a  horrible  assemblage  of  un- 
fortunate criminals,  and  the  globe  contains  nothing  but  corpses. 
I  tremble  to  have  to  complain  once  more  of  the  Being  of  be- 
ings in  casting  an  attentive  eye  over  this  terrible  picture.  I 
wish  I  had  never  been  born."f  The  other  ends  the  dialogue 
-  in  a  hardly  more  reassuring  strain:  "I  have  never  denied  that 
there  are  great  evils  on  our  globe ;  there  are,  doubtless :  we  are 
in  a  storm,  save  himself  who  can,  but  still  let  us  hope  for  better 
days !  Where  or  when  ?  I  know  not ;  but  if  everything  is 
necessary,  it  is  so  that  the  great  Being  is  possessed  of  good- 
ness. The  box  of  Pandora  is  the  most  beautiful  fable  of  an- 
tiquity. Hope  was  at  the  bottom. "J  Thus  the  last  utterance 
of  Voltaire's  system  is  a  groan.  "The  end  of  that  mirth  is 
heaviness."  The  self-complacent  dream  of  human  perfectibility 
which  had  led  him  so  many  years  before  so  rudely  to  reject 
Pascal's  reduction  of  human  nature  to  two  elements — greatness 

d  misery — has  vanished.  The  greatness  is  gone,  the  misery 
alone  remains. 

It  is  a  necessary,  however  unwelcome,  task  to  recall  one  of 
the  incidents  of  Voltaire's  last  days.  He  had  returned  to  Paris 
in  1778,  at  the  age  of  eighty-four,  only  to  die.  The  immense 
outburst  of  enthusiasm,  overtasking  his  feeble  strength,  with 
innumerable  demands  of  labor,  brought  the  last  shadow  over  all 
this  splendor.  At  other  times  the  idol  has  crushed  the  wor- 
shippers, but  here  the  worshippers  crushed  the  idol.  He  had 
to  face  the  question  whether  he  would  renounce  the  funeral 

*  Strauss's  "  Voltaire,"  p.  253.  t  "Dialogues,"  ii.,  p.  194. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  200. 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE   ENCYCLOPEDISTS.    103 

honors  which  a  straightforward  adherence  to  conviction  and 
profession  would  forfeit,  or  whether  he  would  renew  those 
compliances  which  he  had  made  when  he  sought  by  favor  of 
the  Jesuits  to  enter  the  Academy,  when  he  built  a  Church  at 
Ferney  with  the  inscription  "Deo  erexit  Voltaire,"  and  when 
repeatedly  he  partook  of  the  Communion,  and  even,  after  a 
struggle  upon  the  question  of  legal  right,  forced  the  parish 
priest  to  yield  the  point  of  admission  to  it.  Now  he  had  not 
the  moral  courage  to  avoid  a  duplicity  which  in  this  matter  he 
had  himself  condemned,  and  hence  the  miserable  scenes  which 
followed ;  the  first  confession,  still  extant,  in  which  he  pro- 
fessed  to  die  in  the  faith  of  the  Church  in  which  he  had  been 
born,  and  asked  pardon  of  God  and  her  for  any  scandal  he  had 
ever  given ;  the  attempted  second  confession,  interrupted  by 
the  attempt  of  the  priest  to  secure  a  testimony  to  Christ's  di- 
vinity, which  Voltaire  repelled  with  the  sad  last  words,  "  In  the 
name  of  God,  sir,  speak  to  me  no  more  of  that  man,  and  suffer 
me  to  die  in  peace ;"  and  the  struggle  over  the  mortal  remains 
to  achieve  or  hinder  their  interment,  ended  by  the  hasty  retreat 
to  Scellieres,  where  the  coveted  rites,  all  but  too  late,  were  se- 
cured. What  impartial  man  will  say  that  acts  like  these,  any 
more  than  the  funeral  mass  which  was  dictated  for  him  by 
Frederick  in  Berlin,  where  he  was  supreme,  were  worthy  of  a 
leader  of  human  thought^  teacher  of  the  world  in  truth  and 
righteousness  ?^Let  superstition  bear  the  blame  of  surrounding 
the  last  rites,  on  their  spiritual  side,  with  an  unreal  and  mis- 
chievous importance.  Let  intolerance  incur  the  odium  of  mak- 
ing them,  on  their  civil  side,  depend  on  any  restriction  of  sect, 
confession,  or  opinion.  Whatever  of  this  kind  can  be  said  in 
exculpation  of  Voltaire  (and  it  does  not  appear  that  much  can 
be  said),  let  it  be  weighed.  But  on  the  whole  case,  no  leader 
of  belief  or  unbelief  ever  inflicted  on  it  a  worse  stigma,  or  did 
anything  which  tended  more  to  efface  those  clear  boundaries 
between  truth  and  hypocrisy  which  orthodox  and  heterodox 
must  alike  regard.  The  conscience  of  the  world  will  not  ab- 
solve the  recreant  Christian  confessor ;  and  not  less  the  cham- 
pion of  emancipation,  who  shrinks  in  the  last  crisis  from  the 
testimony  of  a  lifetime,  writes  on  his  name  reprobation  and 
failure.* 

*  The  documents  connected  with  Voltaire's  confessions  and  funeral  are 
given  in  the  Appendix  to  Condorcet's  "Vie  de  Voltaire,"  Beuchot's  edi- 
tion, Paris,  Didot,  1831.  The  first  and  only  completed  confession  has 


104       UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

II.  It  would  be  easy  to  give  a  list  of  French  writers  who 
occupy  nearly  the  same  position  in  regard  to  Theism,  and  hence 
to  Christianity,  with  Voltaire.  But  it  is  more  necessary  to 
sketch  the  character  and  opinions  of  those  who  differ,  while 
still  rejecting  Christianity,  and  it  will  be  universally  acknowl- 
edged that  of  these  the  most  influential  is  Rousseau.  He  is  in 
some  respects  much  nearer  Christianity;  but  as  he  also  dis- 
tinctly rejects  it  as  commonly  held,  and  on  the  other  side  athe- 
ism, and  even  scepticism  or  imperfect  Theism  like  that  of 
Voltaire,  it  only  remains  to  put  him  among  the  Theists,  or,  if 
we  will,  Deists,  though  Rousseau  gives  no  evidence  of  familiar- 
ity with  English  Deism,  and  would  probably  have  refused  the 
name.  He  is  as  original  in  his  religious  opinions  as  in  the  rest 
of  his  history ;  and  while  exerting  by  these  opinions  a  disastrous 
influence,  which  has  not  ceased,  it  is  separate  from  the  crusade- 
like  movement  of  which  Voltaire  is  the  centre.  In  truth,  Vol- 
taire and  Rousseau  are  as  different  as  two  great  literary  men  of 
the  same  age  and  language,  and  general  accord  in  what  of  re- 
ligion they  rejected,  could  well  be.  Voltaire  is  a  philosophe  ; 
Rousseau  is  an  enthusiast.  Voltaire  sees  men  as  figures  in  a 
drama,  or  in  the  light  of  some  theory,  with  little  sense  of  out- 
ward nature ;  Rousseau  opens  up  new  interest  in  men  as  men, 
and  has  almost  created  the  sense  of  nature  in  French  literature. 
Voltaire,  as  a  political  reformer,  is  more  a  destroyer  of  abuses ; 
Rousseau,  as  exalting  the  equality  of  man  with  man,  while  in- 
directly ministering  to  socialism,  has  given  a  positive  impulse 
to  human  liberty.  Voltaire,  in  dealing  with  Christianity,  has 
proceeded  against  it  more  in  the  way  of  criticism  and  sarcasm  ; 
Rousseau,  led  mainly  by  sentiment,  has  done  it  so  far  homage, 
but,  by  the  same  sentiment  exaggerated,  has  shut  out  its  usual 
evidence.  Both  unhappily  have  grievous  vices,  with  which  liv- 
Christianity  was  incompatible;  and  in  Rousseau  there  is 
morbid  self-revelation  almost  akin,  as  other  parts  of  his  career, 

been  given  as  translated  above.  The  original  is  dated  2d  March,  and  is 
in  these  words,  "Je  meurs  dans  la  sainte  religion  catholiqne  ou  je  suis  ne, 
esperant  de  la  misericorde  divine  qu'elle  daignera  pardonner  tontes  mes 
fautes;  et  si  j'avais  jamais  scandalise  1'eglise,  j'en  demande  pardon  a  Dieu 
et  a  elle."  p.  431.  The  confession  of  an  opposite  tenor,  which  Strauss 
prints  ("Voltaire,"  p.  341),  and  which  be  says  was  designed  to  satisfy  his 
attendant  Wagniere,  who  was  startled  by  his  master's  recantation,  does 
not  relieve  matters,  as  Strauss  admits  the  genuineness  of  the  ecclesiastical 
document.  Besides,  the  Deistic  one  is  the  first  in  date,  28th  February, 
1778. 


UNBELIEF  IN  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.    105 

to  madness.     But  there  is  in  him,  with  all  his  sad  faults,  no 
mockery  of  things  sacred,  and  the  incredible  ignorance  of  Vol-  \* 
taire  has  in  Rousseau,  as  naturally  in  an  educated  Protestant, 
no  place.     Let  it  be  added  that  much  in  Rousseau  leads  back 
to  Christianity,  and  much  can  be  said  to  show  that  he  wished^ 
anything  rather  than  to  reject  it.     After  the  full  account  of 
Voltaire  given,  the  notice  of  Rousseau  may  be  more  brief. 

Rousseau  (1712-1778)  speaks  warmly  of  his  Christian  edu- 
cation ;  but  there  is  little  trace  of  positive  Christian  doctrine 
in  what  he  tells  us  of  his  father  and  of  his  aunts ;  and  we  may 
fear  that  already  by  his  day  the  old  Genevan  theology  had  given 
place  to  a  coldly  moral  discipline.  His  sudden  change  for  the 
worse  as  an  apprentice,  his  misadventures,  and"  his  flight  into 
Savoy,  where  he  falls  into  the  hands  of  Rome,  open  the  tragedy  ^ 
of  his  life.  His  conversion  to  Romanism  at  Turin,  in  his  six- 
teenth  year,  is  not  to  be  ranked  with  that  of  Bayle  or  Gibbon. 
It  is  only  one  adventure  more  in  his  erratic  and  aimless  career; 
and  his  return  to  Protestantism,  a  quarter  of  a  century  after-  _ 
wards  (1754),  is  marked  by  the  same  sangfroid,  and  is  ascribed  *** 
by  its  author  to  a  desire  to  rehabilitate  himself  in  his  rights  as 
a  Swiss  Protestant,  and  to  a  belief  that  the  religion  of  the  citi- 
zen should  follow  that  of  the  country.  Whatever  liberty  may 
be  associated  with  his  name,  religious  liberty  is  not  of  the  spe- 
cies, unless  it  be  the  liberty  of  indifference  in  regard  to  any 
very  dogmatic  view  of  Christianity.  There  is  nothing  stead- 
fast even  in  the  warmest  of  his  irregular  connections;  and  the 
sending  of  his  children  to  the  Foundling  Hospital,  even  though  ^ 
justified  by  the  alleged  parallel  of  Plato's  ideal  commonwealth, 
has  not  by  any  of  his  critics  been  approved.  Almost  every 
literary  association  formed  by  him  is  sooner  or  later  broken  up ; 
and  without  wading  through  these  voluminous  quarrels  with 
Voltaire,  with  Diderot,  with  Hume,  and  with  most  of  his  high- 
placed  protectors,  male  and  female,  there  is  evidence  enough  of 
irritability  and  changefnlness  to  make  the  exalted  strain  of  ev- 
ery opening  friendship,  as  contrasted  with  the  closing  tone — in 
which  the  whole  world  is  represented  as  conspiring  against  the 
unhappy  solitary,  and  tempting  him  into  evil  communications" 
to  his  ruin — sad  and  humbling.  Yet,  so  great  is  the  genius  of 
Rousseau,  and  such  his  mastery  of  all  the  resources  of  the 
French  language,  that,  notwithstanding  all  that  is  mean  and 
repulsive  in  the  self-drawn  picture  of  a  life  of  impulse  and  pas- 
sion, without  victorious  principle  —  notwithstanding  the  wild 


106       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

preference  of  the  state  of  'nature  to  that  of  civilization,  and 
other  paradoxes  of  his  political  writings,  redeemed  though  these 
are  by  the  measure  of  truth  in  his  "  Contrat  Social,"  and  not- 
withstanding the  boundless  mirage  of  unreality  which  floats 
around  and  seems  to  take  up  into  itself  the  portion  of  fresh 
and  living  water  found  in  the  "Helo'ise"  and  the  "Emile,"  his 

-Jworks  live  as  those  of  Voltaire  do  not,  nor  even  in  the  time  of 
his  greatest  popularity  seem  to  have  done.  It  is  the  testimony 
of  David  Hume,  speaking  of  the  time  when  his  own  ill-advised 
connection  with  Rousseau  began  in  1766,  "  Voltaire  and  every- 
body else  are  quite  eclipsed  by  him."*  And  yet  by  this  time 
all  the  scandal  that  was  possible  had  been  given,  both  by  his 
democratic  and  religious  opinions,  which  led  to  his  expulsion 
from  France  after  the  publication  of  his  "Emile,"  in  1762,  and 
from  Switzerland  in  1765.  His  later  years,  after  his  return  in 
1767  from  England,  where  he  wrote  his  "Confessions,"  are  for 
a  time  as  unquiet  and  wandering  as  ever;  and  when  at  last  he 
settles  down  in  Paris  for  the  last  period  of  his  life,  from  1770 
to  1778,  there  is  a  deepening  of  his  seclusion,  a  gradual  prog- 
ress, in  spite  of  occasional  literary  production,  of  his  mental 
eccentricity,  and  at  length,  little  more  than  a  month  after  Vol- 

X1  taire,  and  at  an  age  younger  by  eighteen  years,  an  entrance  into 
the  same  shadow  of  death.  Madame  du  Deffand,  the  life-long 
friend  of  Voltaire  (though  no  friend  of  Rousseau),  conjoins 
them  in  a  letter  written  four  days  before  Rousseau's  decease, 
in  a  style  which  shows  how  little  of  real  heart  there  was  in  that 
brilliant  circle  in  which  Voltaire  had  been  so  lately  all  but  dei- 
fied, and  the  "  Confessions  "  of  Rousseau  were  "  the  rage  of  the 
world."  "  There  is  no  longer  any  question  of  J.  Jacques  or  of 
his  *  Memoirs ;'  nobody  knows  where  all  that  is  gone  to.  Vol- 
^  taire  is  as  much  forgotten  as  if  he  had  never  appeared;  the 
Encyclopedists  would  have  liked  him  to  live  at  least  some 
months  longer;  he  had  a  scheme  for  making  the  Academy 
more  useful ;  he  was  the  leader  for  all  the  pretended  beaux  es- 
prits,  whose  design  is  to  become  a  corporate  body,  like  the  no- 
blesse, the  clergy,  the  gown,  etc."f  The  Christian  Church  will 
not  thus  treat  men  of  such  intellectual  magnitude,  and,  while 
deploring  and  opposing  their  errors,  will  do  justice  to  their  pow- 
ers, and  to  whatever  services  they  have  rendered  to  mankind. 

*  Burton's  "Life  of  Hume,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  229. 

t  "Letters  to  Horace  Walpole,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  365. 


UNBELIEF   IN  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.   107 

The  vehicle  which  Rousseau  has  chosen  for  the  fullest  utter- 
ance of  his  creed  is  the  "Profession  de  Foi  du  Vicaire  Savoy- 
ard," which  he  has  wrought  into  the  treatise  or  romance  on  ed- 
ucation called  "  Ernile."  It  is  not  the  less  characteristic  of  him 
that  this  profession  of  exalted  faith  and  virtue  is  put  into  the 
mouth  of  a  character  made  up,  by  his  own  acknowledgment,  of 
the  lineaments  of  two  priests  known  by  him  in  his  Turin  and 
Savoy  adventures,  one  of  whom  was  degraded  for  immorality, 
while  the  other,  who  speaks  as  vicar,  professes  only  to  conform 
to  the  Catholic  Church,  and  to  administer  its  sacraments,  in  the 
sense  of  natural  religion.*  With  these  grave  abatements,  the 
defence  of  natural  religion  in  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  book 
of  the"Emile"is  not  only  eloquent,  but  solid.  The  protests 
against  atheism,  against  materialism  and  the  mortality  of  the 
soul,  and  against  a  life  given  up  to  impulse  and  selfishness, 
without  conscience  here  and  retribution  hereafter,  have  rarely 
been  more  strongly  stated.  There  is  one  passage  on  the  being 
of  God  which  deserves  special  notice.  "The  first  and  the 
most  common  view  is  the  most  simple  and  reasonable,  and  to 
unite  all  suffrages  needed  only  to  be  proposed  last.  Imagine  . -. 
all  your  philosophers,  ancient  and  modern,  to  have  first  exhaust 
ed  their  eccentric  systems  of  forces,  of  chance,  of  fatality,  of 
necessity,  of  atoms,  of  an  animated  world,  of  a  living  matter,  of 
materialism  of  every  kind  ;  and  that,  after  them  all,  the  illustri- 
ous Clarke  enlightens  the  world  by  announcing  finally  the  Be-i 
ing  of  beings  and  the  Disposer  of  events ;  with  what  universal 
admiration,  with  what  unanimous  applause,  would  not  this  newl 
system  have  been  received — so  grand,  so  consoling,  so  sublime,  f 
so  fitted  to  exalt  the  soul,  to  give  a  basis  to  virtue,  and  at  the 
same  time  so  striking,  so  luminous,  so  simple,  and,  as  it  seems' 


>  myself,    Ihe  insoluble  objections  are  common  to  all,  be- 
cause the  human  mind  is  too  limited  to  explain  them;  they  ~jL 
prove  nothing  against  any  one  in  particular ;  but  what  a  differ- 
ence in  the  direct  proofs !'     Ought  not,  therefore,  that  scheme 


*  The  names  of  these  two  priests — Gaime  and  Gatier — are  thus  vouched 
for  by  Rousseau  on  the  same  pn^e  of  his  "  Confessions  "  where  stands  the 
record  of  the  offence  of  one  of  them — "Rennissant  M.  Gatier  avec  M. 
Gairne,  je  fis  de  ces  deux  di^nes  pretres  1'original  du  vicaire  Savoyard" 
("CEuvres  dc  Rousseau,"  vol.  i.,  p.  205,  Paris  edition,  1822). 


108       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTUKY. 

alone  to  be  preferred  which  explains  everything,  and  has  no 
more  difficulty  than  the  rest?"* 

Thus  far  Rousseau,  in  this  work,  argues  powerfully  for  the 
general  foundation  of  theism,  pleading  also  for  moral  govern- 
ment, though  not  professing,  by  the  light  of  nature,  to  settle 
all  questions  regarding  penalty  in  a  future  life,  and  only  com- 
ing short  by  speaking  doubtfully  of  the  need  of  prayer.  In 
the  same  spirit  he  protests  energetically  in  a  letter  to  Voltaire, 
called  forth  by  his  poem  on  the  Lisbon  earthquake,  against  the 
scepticism  founded  by  him  on  the  presence  of  evil  in  the  pres- 
ent world. f  But  when  we  come  back  in  the  "  Emile,"  which  has 
defended  so  ably  natural  religion,  to  Rousseau's  examination  of 
the  claims  of  revelation,  the  eloquence  remains,  but  the  reason- 
ing is  gone.  His  principal  difficulties  are  two — the  non-uni- 
versality of  revelation,  and  the  impossibility  of  conveying  it  by 
the  medium  of  a  book  with  clearness  and  certainty.  Here  we 
are  back  to  Tindal,  but  to  Tindal  in  a  manner  exalted  and  made 
passionate  beyond  himself.  Yet  Rousseau  really  adds  nothing 
to  what  was  so  well  met  on  the  English  soil. 

With  regard  to  the  non-universality  of  revelation,  Rousseau 
always  argues  as  if  those  who  wanted  it  would  be  judged  like 

/those  who  have  it.  He  admits  the  inequalities  in  Providence ; 
few  had  felt  them  more :  but  why  may  not  this  one  be  added, 
even  under  the  government  of  God,  that  some  have  n6t  his 
most  precious  gift,  or  have  it  not  yet  ?  and  would  there  be  any 
other  way  to.  redress  this  inequality  but  to  clear  all  sin  instantly 
out  of  this  world,  or  bring  all  others  down  to  its  level  ?  If 
there  be  mystery  in  the  disease,  why  not  in  the  application  and 
success  of  the  remedy  ?  and  may  there  not  be  in  this  arrange- 
ment a  hidden  goodness  greater  than  the  apparent  restraint  ? 
These  are  the  chief  difficulties,  as  relative  to  God ;  and  then, 
with  regard  to  the  non-transmissibility  of  revelation,  as  relative 
to  man,  Rousseau  is  equally  inconclusive.  His  argument  really 
comes  to  this,  that  revelation  is  not  possible,  even  though  God 
should  wish  it ;  for  as  the  first  truths  are  cognizable  to  all  in- 
tuitively, no  other  truths,  as  truths  of  religion,  can  rise  to  the 
same  rank.  But  why  need  they  rise  to  the  same  rank  in  order 
to  be  effectual  ?  A  fact  of  history  does  not  need  to  be  a  fact 
of  consciousness  in  order  to  be  believed,  and  to  be  mightily  in- 

*  CEuvres,  "  tfmile,"  vol.  ix.,  p.  20. 

t  (Euvres,  "Covrespondance,"  18th  August,  1756,  vol.  xvii.,  pp.  250- 
276.  This  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  letters  in  the  collection. 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.    109 

fluential.  piracies  and  prophecy  are  credible,  even  to  the  vul- 
gar, by  the  moral  greatness  of  the  matter  in  which  they  are 
embedde§and  which  at  once  gives  support  to  them  and  re- 
ceives it  "from  them ;  not  to  say  that  the  stupendous  effects  of 
Christianity  itself  are  a  kind  of  miracles  visible  to  the  most  ig- 
norant. If  Rousseau  appeals  to  facts  of  nature,  then  Christians 
appeal  to  facts  of  grace — facts  of  a  second  and  better  nature ;  ^ 
and  though  these  facts  are  not  equal  evidence  to  all,  they  are 
enough  to  those  into  whose  experience  they  enter,  while  they 
have  also  a  voice  to  others.  Nor  is  it  worthy  of  a  great  writer 
to  object  to  revelation  because  lodged  ultimately  in  a  book ; 
for  this  is  to  repeat  the  error  of  rejecting  God  in  civilization, 
because  he  is  also  primarily  manifested  in  nature,  and  to  deny 
to  him  that  organ  of  literature  which  is  the  most  powerful 
among  men.  The  difficulties  of  translations,  various  readings, 
diversities  among  the  authors  themselves,  do  not  forbid  the  idea 
of  revelation.  Rousseau  here  acts  like  a  sophist  of  his  old  com-^ 
munion,  who,  to  frighten  the  simple  Protestant,  descants  on> 
dark  figures,  mutilated  books  of  Scripture,  and  lost  writings/ 
that  may  possibly  have  contradicted  those  we  still  have ;  as  if  L 
the  vast  multitude  of  Christians  who  really  use  it  did  not  be-^ 
lieve  in  a  Bible,  which  in  its  parts  is  vital  and  saving  as  well  as 
in  the  whole,  which  is  superior  in  its  central  lessons  to  all  the 
errors  of  editors  and  translators,  and  which  can  even  convey 
eternal  life  by  its  reproduction  in  sermons,  however  weak,  that 
are  faithful  to  its  spirit,  though  they  do  not  literally  give  back 
one  of  its  sentences.  Rousseau  would  not  have  required  to 
read  all  the  "  Encyclopedic  "  before  he  caught  its  general  drift; 
nor  did  that  work  lose  its  unity  to  those  who  were  ignorant  of 
its  detailed  authorship.  He  says  in  one  of  his  letters,  in  regard 
to  the  Bible,  "  I  have  told  you  many  times  over,  nobody  in  the 
world  respects  the  gospel  more  than  I ;  it  is,  to  my  taste,  the 
most  sublime  of  all  books ;  when  all  others  tire  me,  I  take  it 
up  again  with  always  new  pleasure ;  and  when  all  human  con- 
solations have  failed  me,  1  have  never  sought  those  which  it 
gives  in  vain."  *  Suppose,  then,  that  this  had  gone  further, 
that,  as  an  ordinary  Christian,  Rousseau  had  found  in  this  book 
all  that  a  Christian  finds  in  it,  where  would  have  been  his  own 
assertion,  in  regard  to  a  book  so  exceptional  and  transcendent, 

*  This  letter  is  to  M.  Vernes  of  Geneva,  of  date  March  25,  1758,  vol. 
xvii.,  p.  383. 


110       UNBELIEF  IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

that  its  origin  was  a  matter  of  obscure  criticism,  sufficient  to 
occupy  a  whole  lifetime,  and  requiring  us  to  go  to  Jerusalem 
and  to  Mecca  and  the  ends  of  the  earth,  to  compare  it  minutely 
with  all  other  professed  revelations,  so  that,  in  his  own  words, 
"  it  would  be  much  for  us,  if  before  death  came  we  had  learned 
/'in  what  faith  we  ought  to  have  lived."* 

But  Rousseau  does  not  stop  with  his  formidable  enumeration 
of  difficulties.  That  unreserve  which,  with  all  his  depravation 
and  moral  weakness,  also  belonged  to  his  nature  leads  him 
honestly  to. state  the  internal  evidence  of  the  gospel  as  it  im- 
pressed him  ;  and  hence  that  wonderful  passage,  which  is  the 
most  striking  tribute  in  the  history  of  unbelief,  or  half-belief, 
to  Christianity.  "  I  avow  to  you  also  that  the  holiness  of  the 
gospel  is  an  argument  that  speaks  to  my  heart,  and  to  which  I 
should  even  regret  to  find  any  good  reply.  See  the  books  of 
philosophers,  with  all  their  pomp  ;  how  little  they  are  beside 
this !  Can  a  book  at  once  so  sublime  and  so  simple  be  the 
work  of  men  ?  Is  it  possible  that  he  whose  history  it  is  can 
be  a  man  himself  ?  Is  this  the  tone  of  an  enthusiast  or  of  an 
ambitious  sectary  ?  What  sweetness,  what  purity,  in  his  man- 
ners; what  touching  grace  in  his  instructions;  what  elevation 
in  his  maxims;  what  profound  wisdom  in  his  discourses;  what 
presence  of  mind ;  what  delicacy  and  what  justness  in  his  re- 
plies ;  what  empire  over  his  passions !  Where  is  the  man, 
where  is  the  sage,  who  knows  to  act,  to  suffer,  and  to  die,  with- 
out weakness  and  without  ostentation  ?  When  Plato  paints  his 
ideal  man  covered  with  every  reproach  of  crime,  and  worthy  of 
all  the  rewards  of  virtue,  he  paints,  feature  after  feature,  Jesus 
Christ :  the  resemblance  is  so  striking  that  all  the  fathers  have 
felt  it,  and  it  is  not  possible  for  any  one  to  mistake  it.  What 
prejudices,  what  blindness,  are  not  required  to  make  any  one 
N  venture  to  compare  the  son  of  Sophroniscus  with  the  Son  of 
fo  Mary  ?  What  a  distance  between  the  one  and  the  other ! 
Socrates,  dying  without  pain,  without  ignominy,  easily  sustains 
to  the  end  his  character;  and  if  that  gentler  death  had  not 
honored  his  life,  one  doubts  if  Socrates,  with  all  his  genius, 
would  have  been  other  than  a  sophist.  He  discovered,  it  is 
said,  morality  ;  others  before  him  had  put  it  in  practice.  He 
did  nothing  more  than  say  what  they  had  done;  he  but  re- 
duced their  examples  to  the  form  of  lessons.  Aristides  had 

*  "  Emile,"  book  ivt>  CEuvres,  vol.  ix.,  p.  112. 


UNBELIE1    IX  FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.    HI 

been  just  before  Socrates  had  said  what  justice  was.  Leonidas 
had  died  for  his  country  before  Socrates  had  made  the  love  of 
country  a  duty.  Sparta  was  sober  before  Socrates  had  praised 
sobriety  ;  before  he  had  defined  virtue,  Greece  abounded  in  vir- 
tuous men.  But  where  had  Jesus  found,  among  his  country- 
men, that  pure  and  exalted  morality  of  which  he  alone  has 
held  forth  the  lessons  and  the  example  ?  In  the  bosom  of  the 
most  violent  fanaticism,  the  loftiest  wisdom  made  itself  heard, 
and  the  simplicity  of  the  most  heroic  virtues  honored  the 
meanest  of  all  peoples.  The  death  of  Socrates,  philosophizing 
tranquilly  among  his  friends,  is  the  gentlest  that  one  could  de- 
sire ;  that  of  Jesus,  expiring  amid  tortures,  injured,  reviled,  ac- 
cursed by  a  whole  people,  is  the  most  horrible  that  one  could 
fear.  Socrates,  taking  the  poisoned  cup,  blesses  him  who  pre- 
sents it  and  who  laments  him ;  Jesus,  in  the  midst  of  a  fright- 
ful punishment,  prays  for  his  infuriated  executioners.  Yes,  if 
the  life  and  death  of  Socrates  are  those  of  a  sage,  the  life  and 
death  of  Jesus  are  those  of  a  God.  Shall  we  say  that  the  gos- 
pel history  is  a  fiction  ?  (inventee  a  plaisir).  My  friend,  it  is 
not  thus  that  fiction  works ;  and  the  deeds  of  Socrates,  which^ 
no  one  doubts,  are  less  attested  than  those  of  Jesus  Christ.  At 
bottom,  this  is  only  to  push  back,  without  removing,  the  diffi- 
culty. It  would  be  more  inconceivable  that  several  men  had, 
in  harmony  with  each  other,  fabricated  this  book  than  that  one 
should  have  furnished  the  subject  of  it.  Never  would  Jewish 
authors  have  either  caught  this  tone  or  alighted  on  this  moral- 
ity ;  and  the  gospel  has  marks  of  truth  so  great,  so  striking, 
so  perfectly  inimitable,  that  the  inventor  of  it  would  be  more 
astonishing  than  the  hero."  *  So  much  was  Voltaire  mortified 
by  this  passage  that  he  publicly  complained,  in  one  of  his  * 
waitings,  of  the  expression  that  Jesus  had  "  died  like  a  God."  ' 
He  speaks  of  its  author  as  a  writer  of  "  extravagant  ideas  and 
contradictory  paradoxes."  "  Has  he  seen  gods  die  ?"  he  asks. 
"  Do  they  die  ?  I  do  not  believe  that  the  author  of  so  much 
trash  has  ever  written  anything  so  absurd."  f  But  Rousseau 
could  not  be  thus  put  down,  any  more  than  the  confession  that 

*  This  remarkable  passage — the  most  remarkable  in  Rousseau's  writ- 
ings— is  rarely  quoted  in  its  fulness.  It  is  in  the  "fimile,"  book  iv.,  and 
is«part  of  the  Savoy  vicar's  "Profession  de  Fui"  (vol.  iv.,  pp.  115-117). 

t  This  extract  is  from  the  treatise  of  Voltaire  already  quoted,  "  Dieu 
et  les  Hommes,"  chap.  xxxv.  ("CEuvres  de  Voltaire,"  Geneva  edition, 
vol.  xx.,  p.  110). 


112       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

Jesus  was  the  "Son  of  God"  corning  involuntarily  from  lips 
constrained  by  his  presence  could  be  repressed  by  murmurs 
of  others  that  resented  the  exclamation. 

With  this  we  might  leave  Rousseau,  breathing  the  wish 
(alas !  ineffectual)  that  his  life,  his  writings,  and  his  lasting  in- 
fluence had  been  in  the  line  of  such  a  testimony.  But  there  is 
a  further  light  cast  on  what  seems  favorable  to  Christianity  in 
this  memorable  profession,  and  what  adverse,  here  or  elsewhere, 
by  the  controversy  which  it  called  forth.  Rousseau's  "  Emile  " 
had  been  condemned  by  the  Parliament  of  Paris,  and  also  by 
the  theologians  of  Geneva,  and  he  therefore  wrote,  to  clear  his 
position,  his  letter  to  M.  Beaumont,  Archbishop  of  Paris,  and 
also  his  "  Lettres  de  la  Montagne."  In  the  former  of  these 
works  he  distinctly  recognizes  the  immediate  witness  of  the 
Spirit  in  dealing  with  the  gospel  narrative,  and  the  superiority 
of  this  to  all  literary  controversy ;  and  in  the  latter  he  explains 
-  /  ^t.hftt.  his  difficulties  in  regard  to  the  transmission  of  the  Script- 
/  ure,  as  stated  by  the  Savoy  vicar,  were  urged  more  in  the 
character  of  a  Romish  priest  than  in  his  own.  In  both  Uiese 
writingsAe  earnestly  claims  to  be  regarded  as  a  Christianpmd 
warmly  complains  of  the  injustice  done  him  in  denyinghim 
this  title.  At  the  same  time,  he  enters  fully  in  the  second 
work — his  "  Lettres  de  la  Montagne  " — into  the  question  of 
^  ^piracies,  not  disputing  their  possibility,  but  rather  their  utility^ 
and  he  leaves  the  fact  of  their  occurrence  undecided,  white 
greatly  exalting  in  comparison  the  internal  evidence  of  Chris- 
tianity, which  again  he  finds  in  the  moral  greatness  and  abso- 
lutely perfect  morality  of  Jesus,  apart  from  doubtful  dogmatic 
speculations.*  The  only  offensive  part  of  the  Savoy  vicar's 
profession  which  he  does  not  recall  or  explain  is  the  objection 
to  revelation  on  the  ground  of  its  want  of  universality.  Though 
no  one  could  have  divined  that  this  important  supplement  rep- 
resented the  author's  point  of  view  as  set  forth  in  his  "  Emile," 
it  is  obvious  that,  however  far  the  entire  explanation,  even  at 
the  best,  is  from  ranking  him  with  the  orthodox,  it  at  least 

*  The  passage  in  which  Rousseau  affirms  the  absolute  completeness  of 
the  gospel  morality  is  in  "Lettres  de  la  Montagne,"  Partie  i.,  Lettre  iii. 
"The  precepts  of  Plato  are  often  very  sublime;  but  how  greatly  does  he 
not  sometimes  err,  and  how  far  do  his  errors  reach !  As  for  Cicero,  can 
we  believe  that  without  Plato  this  orator  would  have  attained  to  his 
'Offices?'  The  gospel  alone  is,  as  to  morality,  always  sure,  always  true, 
JL,  always  unique,  and  always  like  itself"  (CEuvres,  vol.  x.,  p.  249,  note). 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE   ENCYCLOPEDISTS.   113 

separates  him  by  a  wide  interval  from  the  rest  of  the  Encyclo- 
pedists ;  and  in  regard  to  the  position  and  claims  of  Jesus  and 
his  transcendent  greatness,  places  him  far  above  even^enan 
and  others  of  that  modern  school,  who  have  been  supposed 
most  entirely  to  have  disowned  the  rude  and  remorseless  unbe- 
lief of  last  centuryXlt  is  perhaps  not  going  too  far  to  say  that, 
in  a  large  view,  Rousseau  (so  far  as  his  ultimate  creed  goes)  is 
a  Christian  of  the  school  of  Charming  rather  than  an  Encyclo- 
pedist. * 

III.  Only  a  few  words  need  to  be  added  in  regard  to  the 
third  or  last  form  of  unbelief  in  this  period  of  French  history, 
the  Atheistical.  This  seems  in  every  case  to  have  been  con- 
nected with  materialism  and  with  fatalism,  which  have  always 
been  the  twin  sisters  of  atheism,  if  not  its  parents  or  its  chil- 
dren. This  is  visibly  so  in  the  case  of  La  Mettrie,  the  very 
title  of  whose  book, "  L'Homme  Machine,"  prepares  us  for  its 
negative  inference  as  to  the  being  of  God.  In  the  case  of  Hel- 
vetius,  who  may  claim  a  word  of  notice,  though  he  entitles  his 
work  "  De  1'Esprit,"  or  "  Mind,"  yet  the  whole  drift  of  it  is  to 
make  mind  exclusively  the  development  of  matter,  and  to  treat 
all  theology  as  delusion  and  superstition.  As  a  work  of  mor- 
als, which  it  mainly  is,  nothing  can  be  more  gross  than  its  self- 
ishness, though  it  pretends,  in  a  certain  way,  to  seek  the  public 
good.  This,  however,  is  no  better  than  the  contentment  of 
universal  selfishness;  and  its  strain  of  virtue  is  so  low  that  it 
even  appeals  to  government  to  promote  luxury,  and,  through 
luxury,  public  good,  by  abolishing  all  those  laws  that  cherish  a 
false  modesty  and  restrain  libertinage.  When  Helvetius  has 
dismissed  God,  government  is,  according  to  his  scheme,  the  all- 
creating  power  that  is  to  take  his  place,  and  make  the  world 
new.  What  an  idea  must  a  philosophe  have  had  of  human 
nature  who  could  write  sentences  like  these  :  "  The  art  of  the 
legislator  consists  in  forcing  men,  by  the  sentiment  of  self-love, 
to  be  always  just  to  each  other."  "  The  legislator  is  to  discov- 
er the  means  of  necessitating  men  to  probity,  by  forcing  the 
passions  to  bear  no  other  fruits  than  those  of  virtue  and  wis- 
dom." f  This  virtue,  however,  cannot  have  any  respect  to  the 

*  Sec  Appendix,  Note  G. 

t  Helvetius,  "  De  1'Esprit,"  p.  238.  The  first  edition  of  ITclvetins 
came  out  in  1758.  The  work  of  La  Mettrie  had  appeared  in  1  743. 


114       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

welfare  of  humanity.  That  is  too  wide  and  Platonic  (respect 
for  convention  does  not  allow  Helvetius  to  say  too  Christian} 
a  sentiment.  The  utmost  practical  reach  of  man's  motives  in 
action  is  his  country ;  it  is  only  genius  that  has  to  do  with  all 
mankind.  Thus  atheism  disowns  even  humanity  ;  and  in  Hel- 
vetius the  spring  is  too  low  to  send  its  waters  far  abroad. 

Another  writer  whom,  unhappily,  we  must  rank  with  the 
atheistic  party  is  Diderot,  the  joint  editor  with  D'Alembert, 
in  its  first  period,  of  the  "  Encyclopedic,"  and  for  its  last  six 
years  (1759-1 765)  its  sole  editor.  Whether  D'Alembert  shared 
this  deeper  unbelief  with  Diderot,  as  he  did  to  the  full  his  an- 
tichristian  zeal  with  Voltaire,  is  not  certain ;  but  the  evidence 
hardly  seems  to  point  to  more  than  something  resembling  Vol- 
taire's later  indecision  and  incoherence.  As  for  Diderot,  there 
is  no  doubt  whatever;  and  one  sees  with  the  deepest  sorrow, 
so  strong  and  vigorous  a  mind,  and  one  so  full  and  encyclope- 
dic, not  only  dead,  but  even  hostile,  to  the  highest  and  most 
ennobling  of  all  convictions.  The  moral  irregularity  of  his  life 
— however  passionately,  by  some  in  our  day,  the  connection 
between  the  moral  state  and  the  opinions  be  denied — may  have 
so  far  tended  to  this  issue  ;  but  when  we  remember  in  what  .1 
direful  element  of  evil  not  only  professed  Theists,  but  professed 
Christians,  then  lived,  we  may  ascribe  it  rather  to  a  certain  con- 
sistency of  thought  and  fearlessness  of  consequences  that  Di- 
derot pursued  materialism  to  its  last  and  deepest  landing-place. 
Yet  this  solution  is  also  difficult,  as  Diderot  is  confessed  to 
have  shrunk  from  disclosure,  at  least  in  the  "Encyclopedic," 
and  to  have  written  for  it  articles  on  religion  that  were  accom- 
modated to  more  orthodox  conclusions.  However,  there  is  not 
the  least  doubt  as  to  the  fact  of  his  entirely  denying  and  op- 
posing theistic  views,  where  he  thought  himself  more  free ;  and, 
in  particular,  he  is  the  reviver  in  more  recent  times  of  the  argu- 
ment, as  old  as  Lucretius,  that  the  order  of  the  universe  may 
be  accounted  for  by  the  innumerable  chances  arising  out  of  the 
manifold  motions  of  its  parts  from  all  eternity  having  led  at 
length  to  the  present  combination,  which  has  proved  perma- 
nent. This,  however,  is  a  mere  assertion,  which  cannot  be  car- 
ried out  in  thought  by  separating  the  alleged  elements  of  the 
universe,  and  then  following  their  motions.  It  assumes  the 
eternity  of  motion  as  essential  to  matter ;  and  it  overlooks  the 
innumerable  cases  where  the  disposition  of  matter  seems  the 
result  of  will,  and  not  of  law.  To  suppose  a  universe  made 


UNBELIEF  IN  FRANCE. -THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.  115 

without  mind  is  as  reasonable  as  to  suppose  an  "  Encyclopedic  " 
without  an  editor;  and  it  might  have  occurred  to  Diderot,  as  it 
did  to  Cicero,  that  those  works  of  nature  which  required  the 
minds  of  so  many  savans  then  and  since  to  explore  them  could 
not  have  existed  without  some  greater  mind  at  the  bottom : 
"  Quis  enim  hunc  hominem  dixerit,  .  .  .  qui  ea  casu  fieri  di- 
cat,  quae,  quanto  consilio  gerantur,  nullo  consilio  assequi  possu- 
mus?"* 

The  only  other  member  of  the  atheistic  group  whom  we 
shall  mention  is  the  one  who  has  been  most  influential,  though 
not  under  his  own  name.  This  is  Baron  D'Holbach,  familiar 
to  all  readers  of  the  works  of  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  and  others  of 
that  circle,  but  still  more  intimate  with  Diderot  and  the  section 
of  the  Encyclopedists  that  went  on  to  atheism.  Any  member 
of  the  original  company  could  say  of  him,  "  Gains  mine  host, 
and  of  the  whole  Ecclesia;"  though  Rousseau  breaks  away 
about  1757,  as  he  says,  from  the  whole  "  D'Holbachians." 
D'Holbach  and  Grimm  are  the  two  Germans  associated  with 
this  coterie,  though  they  are  Germans  as  much  Gallicized  in 
literary  taste  as  Frederick  the  Great.  It  was  at  D'Holbach's 
table  that  David  Hume,  professing  that  he  had  never  met  an 
atheist,  was  told  that  for  the  first  time  he  was  in  the  company 
of  seventeen. f  The  work  of  D'Holbach,  which  preserves  his 
memory  more  than  any  memoirs  or  literary  correspondence,  is 
his  systematic  exposition  of  atheism,  which  appeared  in  1770, 
under  the  title  "  Systeme  de  la  Nature,"  and  with  the  assumed 
name  of  Mirabaud,  who  had  died  ten  years  before,  secretary  to 
the  Academy.  Of  this  work  it  is  not  necessary  to  give  any 
special  outline  or  criticism.  It  is  the  usual  antitheistic  pano- 
rama — matter,  motion,  sensationalism,  necessity,  extinction  of 
the  world  hereafter,  and  sudden  appearance  of  a  new  world 
here,  born  of  enlightened  education  and  legislation,  without 
priests  or  tyrants.  The  force  of  such  a  work  lies  in  the  eccle- 
siastical and  political  rottenness  of  the  times.  Faith  in  God 
was  not  easy  when  Louis  XV.  was  his  vicegerent,  and  a  hie- 
rarchy pandering  to  court  vice  and  corruption  his  oracles ;  and 
as  D'Holbach  had  sanguine  confidence,  like  all  the  rest,  in  his 
own  scheme,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  many  were  impressed 
even  by  his  cold  negations.  "  There  is,"  says  Hume,  then  in 


*  "De  Nutura  Deorum,"  ii.  38. 

t  Burton's  "  Life  of  Hume,"  ii.,  p.  220. 


116       UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

Paris,  "  a  book  published  in  Holland  in  two  volumes,  octavo, 
called  'De  la  Nature.'  It  is  prolix,  and  in  many  parts  whim- 
sical ;  but  contains  some  of  the  boldest  reasonings  to  be  found 
in  print."  * 

While  all  this  incessant,  various,  impetuous  attack  on  Chris- 
tianity and  Theism  by  the  highest  literary  and  social  powers 
was  going  on  in  France,  we  look  in  vain  for  any  such  reply  by 
the  existing  Church  as  came,  and  so  effectually,  in  England. 
Never  did  any  great  corporate  body  exhibit  such  a  testimonium 
paupertatis  as  the  Romish  hierarchy  at  this  crisis.  I  hardly 
know  any  book  that  has  preserved  any  shadow  of  reputation, 
but  the  Abbe  Guenee's  "  Letters  of  Certain  Jews  "  to  Voltaire ;  f 
t^jmd  from  the  Protestant  Church  of  that  day  I  do  not  know  of 
*any  reply  at  all.  Christianity,  as  it  then  was,  could  not  be  de- 
fended. It  would  have  been  a  miracle  of  the  wrong  kind,  had 
any  addition  been  made  to  apologetics  that  would  have  shel- 
tered the  oppressive  superstition  of  the  one  Church  and  the 
meagre  rationalism  of  the  other  from  the  blasts  of  judgment. 

It  may  be  questioned,  however,  whether  the  teachings  of  the 
Encyclopedists,  in  their  vast  work  and  out  of  it,  would  have 
been  wide  and  lasting  enough  to  have  produced,  at  least  speedi- 
ly, a  great  national  revolution,  but  for  another  cause.  The  help 
lent  to  the  American  people  in  their  War  of  Independence  at 
once  exhausted  the  finances  of  the  French  nation  and  created  a 
sympathy  with  liberty  in  a  practical  form  ;  and  these  influences 
together  forced  on  a  crisis  which  could  not  but  shatter  the 
whole  existing  fabric  in  Church  and  State.  How  differently 
the  great  American  nation  emerged  from  their  trial !  They, 
too,  had  their  unbelief,  fostered  and  spread  by  French  co-opera- 
tion and  sympathy,  and  growing  also  for  years  out  of  those  Pe- 
lagian and  rationalizing  tendencies  which  had  saddened  the  last 
\r  days  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  But  in  the  terrible  struggle,  the 
rising  nation,  in  its  deepest  heart,  fell  back  upon  God ;  the 
spirit  of  the  Puritans  prevailed  over  the  spirit  of  the  doubters 
and  indifferentists ;  and  when  peace  came,  a  mighty  Christian 
Church  in  embryo  stood  ready  to  be  baptized  with  the  breath 
of  fresh  revival,  and  to  spread  itself  with  a  growth  equal  to 
that  of  the  new-born  commonwealth,  amid  the  rising  cities 

*  Burton's  "Life  of  Hume,"  ii.,  p.  196. 

t  The  "Lettres  de  quelqties  Juifs"  was  one  of  the  few  works  on  the 
evidences  of  the  Bible,  written  against  him,  which  Voltaire  condescended 
to  notice. 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE   ENCYCLOPEDISTS.    117 

and  over  the  vast  solitudes  of  a  continent.  Alas  for  France 
that  no  such  preserving  salt  was  found  in  her,  no  possibility  of 
such  an  alliance  between  Christianity  and  Democracy,  as  would 
have  met  the  wants  of  the  new  time,  and  averted  the  long  hor- 
rors and  agonies  of  a  periodic  revolution  that  doomed  France 
herself  as  the  worst  sufferer  to  endless  civil  strife  and  foreign 
war,  and  inflicted  upon  the  European  equilibrium  a  shock  which, 
after  well-nigh  a  century,  it  has  hardly  recovered !  The  evil  in- 
heritance of  St.  Bartholomew  and  the  Revocation  had  to  be  ac- 
cepted; and  it  was  seen  how  much  more  deep  was  the  lesson 
of  blood  and  proscription  than  of  tolerance  which  philosophy 
had  preached — a  tolerance  blended  with  contempt  and  scorn, 
and  preached  in  accents  of  bitterness  rather  than  of  love.  It 
was  seen  how  strangely  untrue  was  the  prediction  of  Voltaire, 
that  when  dogmas  were  removed — the  dogmas  of  religion — 
morality  would  be  found  easy  and  harmonious ;  for  new  dog- 
mas arose  —  those  of  morality,  social  and  political  —  and  the 
worst  deeds  were  done  under  the  formulas  of  Liberty,  Equality, 
and  Fraternity.  The  loose  teaching  in  regard  to  marriage, 
and  looser  practice,  bore  fruit  in  relentless  cruelty ;  and  the  al-  v 
liance  which  was  remarked  by  Dugald  Stewart  and  Sir  James  ' 
Mackintosh,  as  it  had  been  before  set  forth  by  Milton,  was  bla- 
zoned in  letters  of  fire,  "  Lust  hard  by  Hate."  The  defence  of 
suicide  also  made  life  cheap,  not  only  in  the  case  of  those  who 
so  numerously  acted  on  it,  but  of  society  at  large.  Rousseau 
had  written  the  awful  sentence  in  regard  to  atheism,  "  Its  prin- 
ciples do  not  kill  men,  but  they  hinder  them  from  being  born, 
in  destroying  the  manners  which  multiply  them,  in  detaching 
them  from  their  species,  in  reducing  all  their  affections  to  a  se- 
cret egoism,  as  fatal  to  population  as  to  virtue."*  Now  it  was 
seen  how  greatly  he  had  understated  the  truth,  and  how  surely 
atheism,  and  not  less  the  bare  theism  that  detaches  God  from 
human  sympathies,  is  fraught  with  violence ;  for  it  was  under 
the  banner  of  one  or  other  that  in  the  four  hundred  and  twenty 
days  of  Terror,  the  guillotine  destroyed  four  thousand  victims.  / 
Voltaire  and  his  associates  would  doubtless  have  disclaimed^ 
these  atrocities;  but  what  did  their  principles  do  to  hinder 
them  ?  These  things  were  done  in  the  name  of  Reason, — first, 
when,  in  November,  1793,  the  so-called  Goddess  of  Reason  was 
installed  in  Notre-Dame ;  and  again,  when,  in  June,  1794,  the 

*  "£mile,"book  iv.,  "(Euvres  de  Kous.sea;-.,"  vol.  ix.,  p.  128. 


]18       UNBELIEF   IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

feast  of  the  Supreme  Being  was  presided  over  by  Robespierre 
x7  in  the  Garden  of  the  Tuileries.  The  boundless  scorn  and  dis- 
gust with  which  absurd  rites  like  these,  celebrated  in  the  midst 
of  ruffianism  and  slaughter,  are  handled  by  Carlyle  might  even 
so  far  represent  the  better  feelings  of  the  Encyclopedists,  who 
desired  no  such  caricature  of  their  system.  But  how  powerless 
had  their  system  been  to  prevent  such  horrors,  even  should  we 
absolve  it  from  all  tendency  to  produce  them  !  Nor  can  we 
fail  to  see  in  these  very  excesses  a  demand  for  a  visible  and  em- 
bodied religion,  such  as  the  philosophers  were  wholly  unable  to 
supply.  The  last  thing  that  they  would  have  expected  was  a 
new  ritual  of  the  God  of  Nature  decreed  amid  barbarities. 
They  looked  rather  to  a  mild  decay  of  Christianity  under  the 
autumn  sun  of  Reason,  till,  without  plucking  off  the  leaves  of 
its  old  worship,  they  might  see  these  cover  only  the  philosophic 
fruits.  "  We  have  never  pretended,"  says  Voltaire  to  D'Alem- 
T"~  bert,  "to  enlighten  the  cobblers  and  the  maid -servants;  we 
leave  that  to  the  apostles."*  But  now  had  come  a  universal 
dispensation  of  reason,  not  only  to  fill,  but  to  shake,  the  whole 
house,  and  leave  nothing  standing  that  did  not  own  reason  for 
its  source.  The  Pentecost  of  unbelief  had  come;  and  what 
were  its  creations?  The  failure  is  decisive  in  the  history  of  the 
world ;  for  there  never  can  be  a  better  moment  to  inaugurate  a 
new  creed,  a  new  ritual,  even  a  new  and  revolutionary  calendar; 
and  if  these  were  all  dead-born,  or  born  to  die,  does  not  Deism 
as  a  final  world  worship  resign  the  field?  A  still  deeper  cause 
for  this  miscarriage  was  indicated  when,  after  the  Reign  of  Ter- 
ror, the  first  man  of  the  Directory,  La  Reveillere-Lepaux,  at- 
•*f — tempted  in  1797  to  establish  the  higher  Deism,  called  Theophi- 
lanthropie.  He  had  read  a  paper  on  the  subject  before  the 
Institute,  and  asked  the  opinion  of  Talleyrand  upon  it.  "  I 
have  but  one  observation  to  make,"  said  the  critic.  "  In  order 
to  found  his  religion,  Jesus  Christ  was  crucified  and  raised 
again;  you  ought  to  attempt  as  much."f  This  was  the  incu- 
rable weakness.  Theophilanthropists,  Deists,  Atheists,  as  they 
did  not  believe  in  miracles,  so  they  did  not  believe  in  martyr- 
dom. They  could  die  for  liberty,  but  not  for  religion.  That 
was  still  left  to  Christians.  When  it  came  to  the  cross,  they 

*  "Correspondence,"  2d  September,  vol.  xliii.,  p.  294. 
t  The  anecdote  is  told  by  Guizot,  in  bis  "  Meditations  sur  PEttit  Actuel 
de  la  Religion  Chre'tienne."     Paris,  18GO,  pp.  1.  '_>. 


rXHELIKF   IN   FRANCE.— THE   ENCYCLOPEDISTS,   no 

were  ready  to  exclaim,  as  Voltaire  of  the  crucifix,  "  Take  away 
that  gibbet !" 

After  these  thirteen  years  of  storm  and  tempest,  "  blood  and 
fire  and  vapor  of  smoke,"  all  illustrating  the  new  age  of  reason, 
nothing  remains  but  a  military  dictatorship ;  the  old  "  Louis 
Quatorze"  days  returned,  with  as  strong  a  reading  of  the 
words  L'etat  c*est  moi! — victories  consoling  for  liberties;  and 
the  Revolution  with  the  "  Encyclopedic "  brought  under  the 
triple  crown,  only  depressed  so  far  as  not  to  overtop  the  sol- 
diers helmet.  Could  the  heroes  of  emancipation  have  wel- 
comed this,  unless,  like  Voltaire,  at  the  last  extremity,  they  were 
prepared  to  lie  down  on  the  bosom  of  the  Church,  and  ask 
pardon  for  having  scandalized  her?  But  there  is  evidence  that 
much  popular  feeling  welcomed  the  return;  and  the  "Genie 
du  Christianisme"  of  Chateaubriand,  which  came  with  the  year 
of  the  Concordat  (1802),  gave  it  eloquent  expression.  Let  us 
acknowledge  the  power  of  this  book,  which,  with  the  force  of 
original  genius,  brought  new  arms  into  the  field,  enlarging  the 
arguments  for  theism  by  the  scenes  and  wonders  of  the  West- 
ern world — savannas,  forests,  starry  solitudes — where  the  sense 
of  God  overpowers  the  soul ;  following  the  track  of  Chris- 
tianity through  ages  as  the  mother  of  arts,  of  laws,  and  of  civ- 
ilization ;  and  showing  how  its  doctrines  and  hopes  meet  and 
nourish  the  deepest  wants  and  longings  of  the  heart.  Yet, 
while  re-allying  genius  to  faith,  and  turning  the  flank  of  unbe- 
lief at  an  unexpected  point,  we  cannot  pronounce  this  a  satis- 
factory apologetic  for  Christianity.  It  is  too  medieval  and 
sacerdotal.  Its  romanticism  runs  into  a  glorification  of  what 
cannot  be  excused,  and  a  defence  of  what  cannot  be  retained. 
Its  helps  from  the  New  World  are  too  traditional  and  fanciful, 
for  the  Jesuit  labors  among  the  Indians  have  hardly  stood  the 
test  of  time  ;  and  it  has  missed  the  best  lesson  of  all,  and  the 
most  hopeful  for  France  and  mankind,  the  spectacle  of  a  Chris- 
tian people  free  and  yet  loyal,  with  the  Bible  for  the  bond  of 
the  family  and  the  strength  of  the  State — breaking  up  the 
wilderness,  yet  retaining  the  records  of  all  progress,  and  dwell- 
ing in  tents  with  the  fathers  of  the  world. 

Thus  we  have  in  this  revived  spirit  of  belief,  always  running 
into  sad  reaction,  and  in  the  persistent  spirit  of  unbelief,  which 
all  the  failures  and  abortions  of  the  Revolution  and  successive 
eras  have  not  tamed  and  beaten  down,  the  two  forces,  delivered 
over  into  this  century,  whose  life-and-death  wrestle  with  each 


120       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

other  has  marked  the  history  of  France  through  all  its  four- 
score years.  Do  we  see  any  prospect  of  decisive  victory  or 
conciliation  ?  I  dare  not  say  it ;  nor,  terrible  and  humbling  as 
their  struggle  is,  with  its  action  on  the  whole  religious,  politi- 
cal, and  social  life  of  the  world,  do  I  desire  its  cessation,  save 
in  one  way.  A  France  victoriously  unbelieving ;  a  France  vic- 
toriously Romanist ;  who  dares  face  either  alternative  ?  Must 
the  extremes  not  almost  by  this  time  despair  of  success?  Is 
not  their  meeting-point  prepared  in  that  evangelical  Protes- 
tantism which,  alas!  they  alike  despise?  Here  the  Romanist 
would  find  reason  without  giving  up  faith,  and  the  Encyclo- 
pedist faith  without  giving  up  reason.  Here  the  Romanist 
would  satisfy  his  love  of  authority  in  a  living  tradition,  and 
the  Encyclopedist  his  love  of  criticism  in  an  ever-fresh  inquiry. 
Here  the  Romanist  would  find  a  corporate  body  that  met  his 
sense  of  unity,  and  the  Encyclopedist  an  individual  develop- 
ment that  met  his  craving  for  variety.  The  divine  principle 
which  the  one  exalts  would  not  absorb  the  human  which  the 
other  cherishes,  and  the  eternity  of  truth  would  be  reconciled 
with  the  march  of  freedom.  Is  this  a  vision  or  a  prophecy  ? 
And  ought  not  the  Protestant  Church  to  open  its  heart  and 
its  gates  as  wide  as  the  Gospel  itself  will  sanction,  to  receive 
guests  from  such  opposite  quarters  to  its  sanctuary  of  peace? 
Then  the  nation  of  Europe  that  wants  oneness  most  would 
have  it  most  fully,  and  the  schism  of  the  sixteenth  century 
would  be  the  healing  of  our  own. 

Let  us  not  forget  our  obligations  as  a  nation  to  God  in 
connection  with  the  rise  and  prevalence  of  unbelief  in  France, 
and  the  revolutionary  movement  to  which  it  tended.  We  no 
doubt  suffered  much  through  the  contagion  of  evil  principles, 
and  the  troubles  and  wars  in  which,  not  without  our  own  fault, 
we  were  involved.  Yet  the  measure  of  truth,  of  a  political 
kind,  however  mixed  up  with  errors,  quickened  our  national 
life,  and  arrested  a  tendency  to  reaction  and  tyranny ;  and  we 
have  reason  to  be  thankful  if  we  were  able  to  choose  the  good 
and  refuse  the  evil.  Above  all,  in  the  wild  tumult  of  unbelief 
and  license  which  marked  the  later  passages  of  the  Revolution, 
a  counteractive  was  found  to  kindred  propensities  in  our  own 
country ;  and  what  the  controversy  with  Deism  had  failed  to 
do  was  now  accomplished.  A  sensible  change  took  place  in 
the  current  of  public  opinion,  and  the  revival  which  Method- 
ism had  so  auspiciously  begun  was  helped  forward  in  many  di- 


UNBELIEF  IN   FRANCE.— THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS.   121 

rections.  In  reply  to  the  defiant  blasts  of  ungodliness  and 
atheism,  proclaiming  their  reign  as  from  the  summit  of  the 
world,  our  great  missionary  societies  were  instituted,  and  sent 
forth  their  messengers  to  its  extremities.  An  electric  impulse 
shot  through  the  English-speaking  Church  in  every  land,  and 
soon  extended  to  other  Protestants.  Faith  wrought  by  love  in 
the  abolition  of  the  slave-trade,  in  prison  philanthropy,  and  in 
similar  movements.  As  if  the  shock  had  awakened  the  deep- 
est genius  of  our  nation,  our  very  literature  started  on  a  new 
career,  with  the  Bible  at  its  head,  of  which  our  greatest  writers 
were  not  ashamed.  The  pulpit  rose  to  a  new  elevation,  and 
Christianity  recovered  its  social  influence  in  the  home,  the 
school,  and  the  commerce  of  life.  Our  giant  wars  did  not  stay 
the  movement;  and  though  peace  brought  its  troubles,  Chris- 
tian plans  and  labors  went  still  forward.  Thus  did  God  make 
"a  decree  for  the  rain  and  a  way  for  the  lightning  of  the 
thunder,"  and  the  volcanic  fires  in  France  guided  us  back  into 
the  way  of  peace.  Nor  did  the  revival  fail  to  revisit  the  land 
whence  in  such  guise  it  had  come,  and  what  reached  us  as  a 
menace  and  a  danger  returned  as  a  safeguard  and  a  blessing. 
Thus  may  the  sufferings  of  nations  be  redeemed;  and  that 
which  is  paid  at  the  longest  date  may  bear  the  largest  in- 
terest. 

.6 


122       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 


LECTURE  V. 

UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— RATIONALISM. 

Differences  of  Rationalism  from  English  and  French  Unbelief. — Popular 
Philosophy. — Bahrdt;  Critical  School. — Decay  of  Orthodoxy. — 
Semler. — Eichhorn. — Canon  of  the  old  Testament. — Origin  of  the 
Gospels. — Meagre  Doctrinal  Creed. — Paulus. — Naturalist  Theory. — 
Reimarus.  — "  Wolfenhiittel  Fragments." — Plan  of  Jesus  and  his 
Disciples. — Lessing:  his  Religion  a  Problem. — Concealment  of  t lie 
Fragmentist. — His  Critical  Position. — "Education  of  the  Human 
Race." — "Anti-Goetze." — "Nathan  the  Wise." — Alleged  Panthe- 
ism; Ethical  School. — Kant:  Defects  of  his  "Religion  innerhalb 
der  Grenzen  der  blossen  Vernunft." — Recovery  of  Germany  from 
Rationalism. 

THOUGH  the  history  of  unbelief  in  Germany  during  last  cen- 
tury is  connected  with  the  histories  of  unbelief  in  England  and 
in  France,  it  is  as  unlike  them  in  some  important  respects  as 
they  are  unlike  each  other.  There  cannot  be  a  doubt  as  to 
the  connection  of  German  unbelief  with  its  two  earlier  forms. 
Lechler,  in  his  "  History  of  English  Deism,"  has  given  a  long 
list  of  the  Deistical  works  that  were  translated  into  German, 
with  the  English  replies  to  them,  before  1760.  As  Voltaire 
was  a  link  of  connection  with  England,  so  he  was  with  Ger- 
y,  through  his  friendship  with  Frederick  the  Great,  and  his 
residence  at  his  court  from  1750  to  1753.  The  issue  of  this, 
indeed,  was  anything  but  brilliant  for  Voltaire,  but  the  declared 
freethinking  of  Frederick  cannot  but  have  acted  adversely  on 
the  faith  of  his  people ;  and,  accordingly,  Lechler  gives  the  tes- 
timony of  an  eye-witness,  who,  in  the  Seven  Years'  War,  had 
seen  highly-placed  officers  in  the  Prussian  camp  diligently 
reading  Collins  and  Tindal.*  There  were  other  features  of  re- 
semblance which  have  been  noticed.  As  there  had  been  a  re- 


*  This  eye-witness  was  Thorschmid,  editor  of  the  German  "  Freidenker 
Bibliothek,"  which  contained  translations  and  refutations  of  the  English 
Freethinkers,  and  came  out  from  1765  to  17G7. — LECHLER,  p.  451. 


UNBELIEF   IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.  123 

action  in  England  against  Puritanisn\£sp  there  was  a  reaction  J^. 
in  Germany  against  the  Pietism  of  Spener  and  Francke>  and 
as  there  had  been  a  philosophy  which  had  been  used,  though 
unfairly,  to  help  on  freethinking — that  of  Locke  in  England, 
and  afterwards,  with  less  misapplication,  that  of  Condillac  in 
France — so  the  philosophy  of  Wolff,  though  not  by  any  mate- 
rialistic bearing,  yet  by  its  pendency  to  exalt  the  power  of 
reason^and  also  by  the  stress  it  laid  on  natural  religion,  had 
helped  to  beget  rationalism  in  Germany.  All  this  may  have 
in  it  some  truth ;  but  I  am  struck  with  the  unlikeness  of  the 
German  to  the  English  and  French  movements — though  cer- 
tainly they  are  of  the  same  family — rather  than  with  the  like- 
ness. In  the  first  place,  the  German  movement  does  not  rise 
out  of  grievances.  It  must  have  arisen  out  of  the  want  of 
faith  ;  but  this  had  not  associated  with  it  any  sense  of  re- 
straint or  oppression.  In  England,  the  existence  of  a  body  of 
privileged  ecclesiastics  was  assailed  as  an  exception  to  general 
freedom ;  and  in  France,  the  name  of  the  Church  was  the  syn- 
onym of  all  social  tyranny  and  injustice.  But  in  Germany  no 
complaint  of  this  kind  was  heard  among  the  abettors  of  ration- 
alism; and  they  sought  no  redress  of  a  political  nature,  with 
the  threatened  alternative  of  revolution.  Secondly,  the  contro- 
versy was  not  conducted  by  men  outside  the  Christian  body 
protesting  vehemently  against  its  corruptions,  and  pleading  for 
its  dissolution  as  a  religious  institute,  or  its  radical  transforma- 
tion. There  was  nothing  of  the  character  of  an  invasion  or 
onset  upon  a  book,  or  system,  or  entire  order  of  men ;  at  least 
this  was  not  at  all  the  prevailing  character,  as  in  England  and 
France.  The  changes  were  made  by  men  still  professing  to 
retain  the  Bible,  and  to  treat  it  with  great  respect;  who  be- 
longed as  much  to  the  Church  and  to  Christianity,  according  to 
their  own  representations,  as  before ;  and  who^with  very  few 
exceptions,  were  of  that  clerical  order^  which  in  England,  and 
not  less  in  France,  was  the  mark  of  endless  denunciations  and 
sarcasms,  as  the  home  of  priestcraft  and  spiritual  jugglery  and 
tyranny.  Hence  a  third  difference  between  the  German 
movement  and  the  foregoing  ones,  viz.,  that  the  results 
were  far  more  of  the  nature  of  a  compromise.  In  England 
the  Deistical  modifications  were  wholly  rejected,  and  the 
Christian  Church  emerged  stronger  in  faith  at  every  point. 
In  France  the  creed  of  both  Romanist  and  Protestant  re- 
mained unaffected,  and  the  chief  visible  result  was  a  political 


124      UNBELIEF  IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

convulsion.  In  Germany,  on  the  other  hand,  while  the  form 
of  Christianity  was  retained,  and  its  general  historical  basis 
and  institutions  adhered  to,  the  movement  mainly  issued  in 
lowering  the  tone  of  faith  in  wide  circles  within  the  Church, 
and  in  leading  to  the  denial  of  those  articles  which  seemed 
contrary  to  reason.  Hence  this  result  has  been  called  Natu- 
ralism or  Rationalism  rather  than  Deism;  for  so  much  of 
Christianity  was  conserved  that  the  clergy  and  others  who 
went  through  the  change  never  thought  of  rejecting  the  name 
of  Christ;  and  they  even  found  it  convenient  to  retain  the 
old  confessions  and  hymn-books  (with  some  dilution  of  the 
latter),  though  all  the  while  the  position  of  most  of  them 
agreed  better  with  the  views  of  the  English  Deists  than  with 
those  of  the  Augsburg  Confession  or  Heidelberg  Catechism. 
German  Rationalism  was  in  this  respect  a  phenomenon  simi- 
lar to  the  Unitarianism  of  the  New  England  States,  as  that 
grew  by  an  internal  process  of  decay  out  of  the  Puritanism 
of  the  seventeenth  century ;  or  like  the  Broad  Churchism  of 

/^  more  recent  times,  which  denies  or  abates  the  supernatural,  and 
yet  professes,  even  to  its  extreme  verge,  a  faith  of  some  kind 
or  other  in  Christianity. 

These  are  the  principal  differences,  but  other  subordinate  ones 
may  be  noticed.  The  German  movement  towards  unbelief  is 
much  more  learned  than  either  the  English  or  French.  It  was 
conducted  by  theologians  fully  trained,  and  not,  as  in  England, 
by  men  who  had  broken  down,  or  were  amateurs;  or,  as  in 
France,  by  great,  but  in  this  department  unskilled,  popular  writ- 
ers. Hence,  while  there  has  been  much  haste  and  prejudice, 
there  has  not  been,  or  not  often,  the  same  lamentable  igno- 
rance ;  and  there  is  also,  on  the  whole,  a  more  reverent  spirit, 
and  comparatively  little  of  that  impurity  by  which  French  lit- 
erature, even  in  its  highest  representatives,  is  here  disgraced. 
Naturally,  too,  as  the  Deist  without  makes  the  worst  case  he 

'can  against  the  Bible,  the  Rationalist  within  says  the  most  he 
can  in  its  favor.  It  is  also  to  be  noticed  that  Atheism  and 
Pantheism  do  not  appear  on  the  roll  of  eighteenth-century  un- 
belief in  Germany.  It  is  only  with  the  doubtful  exception  of 
Lessing  that  Pantheism  asserts  itself  ere  the  century  has  run 
out;  nor'has  Atheism  become  a  professed  creed  till  our  own 
days.  How  this  is  to  be  accounted  for  does  not  belong  to  this 
inquiry.  It  was  natural  for  Rationalism  first  to  take  the  field, 
and  try  its  strength.  When  this  failed,  other  and  more  des- 


UNBELIEF   IN    GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          125 

perate  counsels  obtained  a  hearing.  We  are,  therefore,  here 
concerned  with  Rationalism,  or  with  the  Deism  that  underlies 
it,  or  falls  below  it,  and  with  this  alone. 

It  is  not  easy  to  make  any  classification  of  the  Rationalism 
of  Germany  as  it  developed  itself  from  about  the  year  1750  to 
the  close  of  the  century  within  which  our  vision  is  confined. 
Many  names,  of  course,  must  be  omitted,  and  only  types  can  be 
selected.  This  being  understood,  perhaps  we  may  reduce  the 
various  and  sometimes  complicated  phenomena  to  three  heads 
— viz.,  first,  Popular  Rationalism,  sometimes  called  popular  phi- 
losophy ;  secondly,  Critical  Rationalism  ;  and,  thirdly,  Ethical 
Rationalism.  Under  the  first  class,  fall  men  like  Dr.  Carl  F. 
Bahrdt ;  under  the  second,  names  like  Semler,  Eichhorn,  and 
Paul  us,  to  whom  we  may  add  Lessing,  and,  as  a  cross  between 
the  two,  and  as  associated  with  Lessing,  Reimarus,  the  Wolfen- 
biittel  Fragmentist ;  while  under  the  third  stand  Kant  and  those 
of  his  school.  It  is  but  a  rough  division,  but  it  may  serve  to 
give  some  order  to  our  discussions ;  and  it  follows  generally  the 
track  of  development. 

I.  Of  the  men  of  the  popular  philosophy — a  school  of  which 
Dr.  Carl  F.  Bahrdt  is  the  latest  and  most  notorious  product — 
it  is  not  necessary  to  say  much.     They  claimed  to  take  the 
place  of  Wolff  and  his  disciples,  eliminating  the  more  abstruse 
and  speculative   element  derived  from  Leibnitz,  and   also  the 
higher  Christian  element,  which  Wolff  had  retained.    Their  ten- 
dency in  philosophy  is  to  empiricism ;  in  ethics,  to  utilitarian- 
ism ;  and  in  religion,  to  Deism.     Their  head-quarters  was  Ber- 
lin, where,  in  1765,  the  bookseller  Nicolai  established  his  maga- 
zine, supported  by  the  theologian  Eberhardt,  the  author  of  the 
"  New  Apology  for  Socrates,"  by  Moses  Mendelssohn,  the  Jew- 
ish representative  of  Illumination,  and  by  others.     This  school 
came  nearest  the  French  in  its  so-called  Aufkldrung,  its  exalta-  w- 
tion  of  culture,  and  its  sanguine  confidence  in  man's  perfectibil-  / 
ity  by  education,  and  by  a  rational  regard  to  his  own  happiness. 
Of  this  spirit  Bahrdt  is  to  be  taken  as  the  exaggeration.     Born, 
in  1741,  in  Saxony,  he  had  been  pastor  and  professor  in  Leip- 
zig till  his  irregularity  of  life  drove  him  away ;  after  which, 
wandering  from  place  to  place,  he  found  for  ten  years  a  refuge     / 
in  Halle,  where  he  at  once  delivered  lectures  and  kept  a  coffee-  rssSi 
house ;  till,  after  other  adventures  in  Prussia,  including  an  im-  / 
prisonment,  he  died,  in  1792.     His  work,  which  bears  the  lofty 


126      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  'EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

title,  "  System  of  Moral  Religion  for  the  Final  Tranquillizing  of 
Doubters  and  Thinkers,  to  be  Read  by  all  Christians  and  non- 
Christians,"  was  published  in  1787,  at  Berlin,  with  a  dedication 
(to  the  King  of  Prussia)  as  grandiose  as  its  title.  But  this 
book,  which  doubtless  contains  the  substance  of  its  author's 
lectures  at  Halle  and  elsewhere,  is  really  more  rational  than  his 
career  and  style  might  have  led  one  to  anticipate.  It  is  a  sys- 
tem of  Utilitarianism,  or  Search  after  Happiness.  But  it  makes 
happiness  depend  on  God,  and  it  argues  well  for  his  existence 
in  the  usual  way,  and  also  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and 
a  moral  life  in  preparation  for  the  future.  Where  it  totally 
fails  is  in  reducing  sin  to  a  minimum,  curable  by  suffering  and 
by  repentance,  and  in  excluding  the  whole  Bible  doctrine  of  re- 
demption. Duty  sinks  also  low,  and  prayer  is  merely  subjec- 
tive in  its  effects.  Christ  is  only  the  greatest  of  teachers  and 
martyrs ;  though  Bahrdt  departs  from  the  French  unbelievers 
in  asserting  so  much  as  this,  and  in  closing  his  account  of  him 
with  an  apostrophe  which  so  far  agrees  with  that  of  Rousseau : 
"O  thou  great,  godlike  soul!  no  mortal  can  name  thy  name 
without  bending  the  knee,  and  in  reverence  and  admiration  feel- 
ing thy  unapproachable  greatness !  Where  is  the  people  among 
whom  a  man  of  this  stamp  has  ever  been  born  ?  How  I  envy 
you,  ye  descendants  of  Israel !  Alas  that  you  do  not  feel  the 
pride  which  we  who  call  ourselves  Christians  feel,  on  account 
of  one  so  incomparable  being  sprung  of  your  race!  .  .  .  That 
soul  is  most  depraved  that  knows  Jesus,  and  does  not  love  him."* 
It  is  something  to  hear  as  much  as  this  even  from  the  mouth 
of  an  erratic  German  rationalist ;  and  to  the  credit  of  Germany 
it  must  be  said  that  even  its  rationalism — as  distinct  from  scep- 
ticism— has  not  often  sunk  below  this  strain. 

II.  The  critical  school  had  a  far  greater  influence  in  forming 
the  German  nation  to  rationalism  than  the  popular  philosophy, 
or  the  general  spirit  of  literature.  It  was  in  the  German  Uni- 
versities, where  the  future  occupants  of  the  pulpit  were  trained, 
that  the  deepest  fountain-head  of  rationalism  was  to  be  sought. 
At  the  Reformation  a  mighty  influence  went  forth  from  the 
Universities ;  and  this  has  continued  down  to  our  own  times, 
though  it  is  now  limited  by  the  creation  of  a  new  force  in  an 
independent  career  in  political  life.  At  the  time  when  the 

*  "  Moralische  Religion,"  vol.  i.  p.  71. 


UNBELIEF   IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.  \-2l 

rationalistic  movement,  fed  by  different  sources,  was  in  its 
commencement,  it  was  unfortunate  for  the  future  welfare  of 
the  Protestant  Church  that  the  ablest  scholars,  and  men  most 
fitted  in  other  respects  to  form  the  national  mind,  were,  if  not 
alienated  from  positive  Christianity,  not  warmly,  much  less  en- 
thusiastically, devoted  to  it.  There  were  great  scholars,  but 
nowhere  a  great  Christian  leader,  among  the  theological  pro- 
fessors ;  and  ere  long  the  scholars  who  were  in  the  front  rank 
either  became  silent  or  avowedly  hostile.  A  great  scholar  like 
Bengel  at  this  crisis,  a  great  character  like  Spener,  with  even 
less  of  scholarship,  restored  to  life,  especially  if  assisted  by 
master-spirits  among  the  younger  men,  might  have  retrieved 
the  battle.  But,  as  it  was,  the  weight  of  older  scholarship  was 
void  of  earnestness,  and  that  of  the  rising  genius  and  learning, 
inclined,  by  false  principles,  critical  or  philosophical,  the  wrong 
way,  so  that  a  career  was  entered  upon  which  could  not  stop 
till" it  reached  the  bottom.  It  would  be  wrong  to  say  of  such 
elder  scholars  as  Baumgarten  in  Halle,  Ernesti  in  Leipzig,  or 
John  David  Michaclis  in  Gottingen,  that  they  were  rationalists. 
They  resembled  very  much  the  theologians  of  the  Church  of 
England  who  repelled  Deism  ;  and  in  the  same  place  would 
probably  have  acted  the  same  part.  But  they  had  lost  some- 
what of  faith  in  the  Bible  as  a  supernatural  product;  and  it 
had  become  to  them  more  a  great  and  transcendent  classic  than 
a  living  revelation.  They  were  so  familiar  with  the  historico- 
grammatical  interpretation  of  it,  justly  urged  by  Ernesti  within 
its  own  limits,  that  they  tended  to  forget  that  there  was  more 
than  history  and  grammar  in  the  case,  and  that  a  higher  king- 
dom was  entered  by  this  gate-way.  In  a  younger  mind,  not 
without  its  serious  feeling  and  sympathy,  but  still  more  blind 
to  the  Divine  side  of  the  Bible,  and  more  keenly  alive  to  the 
human,  relying  still  more  upon  philology  and  history,  and 
more  averse  to  any  recognition  of  spiritual  help,  such  as  had 
been  contended  for  by  the  school  of  Spener,  this  tendency  be- 
came decisive,  and  in  the  career  of  Semler  marks  an  epoch. 
This  theologian,  brought  up  in  Halle  amid  pious  influences, 
gradually  goes  over  to  what  may  be  called  the  theology  of  the 
letter,  and  from  the  commencement  of  his  professorship  in  this 
University,  in  1 752,  becomes,  as  he  would  have  said  himself, 
more  and  more  free  from  traditional  influences.  It  is  impossi- 
ble to  notice  or  even  simply  to  mention  his  various  works; 
but  one  of  them,  his  treatise  on  the  "  Furnishing  of  a  Thcolo- 


128      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

gian,"*  casts  much  light,  not  only  on  his  own  position,  but  that 
of  others  in  the  German  Church,  when  it  was  published  in 
1765-66.  There  is  an  extreme  over-valuing  of  philological  ap- 
paratus, and  of  wide -extended  church -historical  details,  espe- 
cially drawn  from  the  first  Christian  centuries,  such  as  the  au- 
thor pours  oat  from  his  boundless  memory.  The  Bible  seems 
to  float  amidst  this  mass  of  critical  and  historical  matter,  and 
to  be  almost  submerged  by  it.  The  principle  is  pushed  greatly 
too  far,  of  judging  every  part  of  Scripture  by  its  own  context, 
so  that  the  Old  Testament  becomes  little  better  than  a  book 
for  the  Jews;  and  the  underlying  unity  of  the  New  Testament 
also  suffers.  Classic  usage  is  made  to  dominate  Scripture 
teaching ;  and  thus  the  Bible  is  reduced  to  the  level  of  nature. 
In  harmony  with  this  tendency,  all  through  the  innumerable 
Church  history  references,  the  liberality  of  culture  seems  to 
consist  in  being  receptive  of  every  fashion  of  doctrine  regard- 
ing the  Trinity,  or  Grace,  with  a  leaning,  however,  rather  to 
Arius  than  to  Athanasius,  and  to  Pelagitis  than  to  Augustine. 
Yet  Semlcr  has  also  his  connections  with  orthodoxy.  He 
speaks  affectionately  of  Luther,  Melancthon,  and  Camerarius, 
as  his  masters.  When  he  brings  in  the  Socinians,  and  ac- 
knowledges their  merits  in  interpretation,  it  is  not,  as  an  Eng- 
lish Deist  would  infallibly  have  done,  to  make  a  side-stroke  at 
their  opponents,  for  he  faithfully  criticises  Socinus's  book  "De 
Servatore,"  and  charges  it  with  one  -  sidedness  and  prejudice, 
and  he  calls  attention  to  the  disagreements  in  interpretation 
among  the  Socinians  thcmselves.f  We  thus  see  how  Sem lei- 
had  not  worked  out  his  own  scheme  to  its  consequences;  and 
the  same  thing  appears  in  his  treatment  of  Dr.  Bahrdt,  when 
the  latter  attempted  to  enter  the  University  of  Halle  as  a  di- 
vinity professor;  for  it  was  by  Semler's  influence  with  the 
Faculty,  in  a  great  measure,  that  this  proposal  was  defeated, 
and  the  example  was  thus  given  that  rationalism  did  not  re- 
gard toleration  as  unlimited. 

The  work  of  Semler  was  carried  forward  by  others,  but  by 
none  of  so  much  learning  and  ability  as  Johann  Gottfried  Eich- 
horn  (1752-1827),  who,  from  1774  professor  in  Jena,  and  then 
from  1788  in  Gottingen,  marks  in  the  latter  place  the  lowest 
point  of  depression  between  Michaelis  and  Ewald.  And  yet 

*  "Institutio  Brevior  nd  Liberalem  EnuUtionem  Theologicara." 
t  Semler's  "Brevior  Institutio,"  ii.  §  26. 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.  129 

Eichhorn  was  by  no  means  a  vulgar  rationalist,  but  one  filled 
with  the  highest  admiration  of  the  literary  qualities  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  resolute  in  defending  it  as  a  religious  document 
unrivalled  in  its  time  as  a  vehicle  of  truth  and  goodness.  Un- 
happily, in  Eichhorn  the  idea  of  inspiration  is  entirely  wanting. 
Of  the  supernatural  in  Old  Testament  history  there  is  the  faint- 
est lingering  trace.  Miracles  have  no  existence,  and  are  exag- 
gerations of  natural  phenomena;  as,  for  example,  the  falling  of 
the  walls  of  Jericho  represents  the  effect  of  a  sudden  assault, 
along  with  a  shout,  when  the  marching  round  six  times  had  put 
the  garrison  off  their  guard  ;*  and  the  escape  of  Jonah  is  pos- 
sibly the  result  of  his  alighting  on  the  back  of  a  sea-monster 
that  carried  him  to  the  shore.f  Eichhorn,  however,  holds  as 
much  as  can  be  reconciled  with  a  merely  natural  theory  of  the 
origin  of  religion.  Moses  having  attained  (he  does  not  explain 
how)  to  the  conviction  of  the  divine  unity,  becomes  the  mis- 
sionary of  that  idea,  and  the  leader  of  the  nation  that  had 
grown  in  Egypt.  The  divine  communications  that  have  not 
reality  for  us,  or  reality  only  as  natural  discoveries  of  truth, 
had  a  higher  reality  for  them.  They  acquired  Canaan  by  natural 
means,  but  yet  their  conquest,  like  every  advance  in  civilization, 
was  justified  by  history,  and,  in  that  sense,  divine.  Prophecy, 
in  the  supernatural  sense,  did  not  exist  among  them ;  but,  ac- 
cording to  the  general  law  of  religions,  they  had  their  oracles, 
purer  and  nobler  than  those  of  any  classical  people.  The 
prophets  were  their  moral  reformers,  strong  in  the  moral  ideas 
of  retribution  as  applicable  to  nations,  and  hence  divining  the 
history  of  other  peoples  and  their  own  with  something  like 
preternatural  sagacity,  and  continually  enlarging  their  religious 
horizon  till  they  look  forward  to  something  like  a  golden  age, 
in  which,  in  connection  with  a  descendant  of  their  kings,  the 
evils  of  the  present  are  to  be  redressed,  and  a  better  age  usher- 
ed in.  In  all  this,  as  will  be  seen,  there  is  no  doctrine  of  re- 
demption in  the  orthodox  sense,  and  Eichhorn  entirely  misses 
the  character  of  the  Jewish  dispensation  as  a  preparatory,  a 
typical,  and  a  developing  economy,  designed  to  awake  the  sense 
of  sin,  and  to  satisfy  it  by  salvation.  In  this  respect  he  falls 

*  Eichhorn,  "Einleitung  in  das  Alte  Testament,"  vol.  iii.  p.  402,  fourth 
edition.  Go'ttingen,  1823. 

t  Eiehhorn  allows  here  a  subsequent  legendary  dressing  of  the  naked 
fact.— Vol.  iv.  p.  349. 

6* 


130      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

far  even  below  Ewald,  who,  however  vague  his  doctrine  of  the 
supernatural  and  of  redemption,  has  penetrated  to  the  idea  of 
the  Mosaic  economy  as  one  of  grace,  and  to  the  view  of  the 
Messiah  as  a  perfect  Being  and  a  divinely-sent  Deliverer. 

While  Eichhorn  is  thus  low  and  even  dreary  as  to  the  cen- 
tral parts  of  his  scheme,  it  is  wonderful  'how  often  he  stops 
short  in  his  criticism  of  those  results  which  some  who  have 
followed  him  have  pronounced  imperative.  He  contests  the 
later  chapters,  and  indeed  some  others,  of  Isaiah,*  and  places 
the  last  shape  of  Daniel  in  the  Maccabean  period,  though  he 
allows  an  earlier  authorship  for  the  first  six  chapters,  and,  curi- 
ously enough,  ascribes  the  last  not  to  any  patriotic  zeal  against 
Antiochus,  but  to  mere  (though  innocent)  fiction,  or  history  as- 
suming the  form  of  prophecy. f  But  he  stoutly  contends  for 
the  historic  character  of  the  Pentateuch,  while  prosecuting  large 
researches  into  Elohistic  and  Jehovistic  parts  of  Genesis;  and 
he  maintains  that  the  last  four  books  contain  nothing,  roundly 
speaking,  that  may  not  have  been  written  by  Moses,  or  some 
of  those  about  him,  and  under  his  eye ;  while  the  whole  Pen- 
tateuch, with  some  less  important  later  insertions,  was  finally 
combined  out  of  these  earlier  materials  after  the  conquest  of 
Canaan  and  before  Samuel. J  So  also  he  does  not  allow  nearly 
so  much  as  De  Wette  and  others  contend  for  of  difference  be- 
tween the  Books  of  Samuel  and  Kings,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
of  Chronicles  on  the  other.§  He  is  willing  to  grant  a  multi- 
tude more  of  Psalms  to  David  than  is  admitted  by  Ewald;  and 
even  the  Book  of  Job,  due  to  some  extra -Israelite  source,  or 
some  Israelite  in  Idumean  regions,  he  prefers,  in  spite  of  every 
difficulty,  to  carry  up  to  an  age  before  Moses,  so  as  to  account 
for  its  non-Mosaic  color,  and  want  of  allusion  to  his  history. || 
There  is  thus  an  honesty  in  Eichhorn  which  one  must  respect; 
and  as  his  critical  work  ran  through  forty-four  years  (1780- 
1824),  it  met  a  returning  spirit  of  faith;  and  it  still  hangs 

*  "  Einleitung,"  vol.  iv.  pp.  82-90.  t  Ibid.,  iv.  pp.  508-512. 

J  The  whole  discussion  of  Eichhorn  on  the  Pentateuch,  in  his  third  vol- 
ume, is  much  liker  that  of  Hengstenberg  or  Havernick  than  of  Ewald. 
His  summing  up  is  found  in  vol.  iii.  pp.  322-368. 

§  See  his  protest  against  the  depression  of  Chronicles,  in  order  to  favor 
the  late  entrance  of  the  Levitical  system. — Einleitung,  vol.  iii.  p.  604. 

||  "  The  oldest  poetical  work  of  antiquity  is  the  Book  of  Joh,  a  Theodi- 
cee  which  has  been  admired  for  four  thousand  years,  and  will  be  to  the 
end  of  time." — Ibid.,  vol.  v.  p.  114. 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          131 

with  a  kind  of  moonlike  clearness  and  roundness  of  outline  in 
a  warmer  sky. 

His  results  in  the  field  of  New  Testament  criticism  are  also 
of  interest,  though  probably  more  destructive.  He  is  the  au- 
thor of  the  famous  document  hypothesis  in  regard  to  the  origin 
and  mutual  relations  of  the  Synoptical  Gospels,  tracing  them  up 
to  an  Aramaic  original  in  its  successive  formations  and  combi- 
nations. Two  shapes  of  this  original,  one  with  additions  such 
as  now  appear  in  Matthew,  and  another  with  additions  such  as 
now  appear  in  Luke,  are  run  together  by  a  process  of  selection 
and  fresh  construction  by  Mark  into  his  canonical  Gospel ;  an- 
other, or  third,  shape  of  the  original,  embracing  additional  mat- 
ter peculiar  to  Luke,  is  run  together  with  the  first  document 
used  by  Mark  to  form  our  present  canonical  Matthew ;  and, 
with  the  second  document  used  by  Mark,  is  run  together  by 
Luke  to  form  our  present  canonical  Luke.  The  common  orig- 
inal supplies  the  matter  in  which  the  three  Evangelists  agree ; 
its  modifications  towards  Matthew  and  towards  Luke  supply 
the  parts  where  two  Evangelists  out  of  three  agree  by  follow- 
ing the  modified  originals,  as  supposed ;  while  the  wonderful 
verbal  harmonies  in  the  present  Greek  are  explained  by  a  pre- 
existing Greek  translation  of  the  first  and  third  documents,  so 
that  here  there  is  accordance ;  while  the  second  also,  as  used  by 
Mark  and  Luke,  had  to  be  translated  by  them  independently 
for  the  first  time,  so  that  the  result  there  disagrees.*  Such  is 
the  complicated  scheme,  devised  to  meet,  as  all  admit,  compli- 
cated facts,  which  the  wonderful  ingenuity  of  Eichhorn  has 
worked  out ;  nor  is  there  anything  at  all  rationalistic  in  the 
conception  of  such  a  theory.  Some  such  hypothesis,  or  some- 
thing equivalent,  must  be  brought  in  to  account  for  the  aston- 
ishing compound  of  harmony  and  difference  which  the  Synop- 
tical Gospels  present ;  and  hence  the  other  hypotheses  before 
or  after  the  days  of  Eichhorn,  such  as  the  copying  hypothesis, 
the  fragment  hypothesis,  and  the  oral  Gospel  hypothesis,  with 
modifications  of  Eichhorn's  one,  as  by  Weiss  in  our  own  times, 
do  not  argue  anything  for  the  orthodoxy  or  heterodoxy  of  their 
authors.  But  Eichhorn  uses  his  theory  rationalistically,  turn- 
ing the  so-called  discovery  of  the  original  Gospel  into  an  argti- 

*  The  document  hypothesis  occupies  nearly  the  first  half  of  the  first 
volume  (pp.  161-454)  of  the  "  Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament."  The 
summing  up  is  in  pp.  372-375. 


132       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

ment  against  the  historical  reality  of  the  miraculous  conception 
and  other  facts,  which  that  Gospel  is  alleged  to  want,  and  even 
denying  to  the  Apostle  Matthew  sufficient  authority  for  what- 
ever is  not  found  in  the  other  Gospels;  so  that  the  death  of 
Judas  and  the  casting  of  lots  would  fall  out,  and  even  the 
watch  at  the  sepulchre,  on  which  Woolston  built  his  denial  of 
the  resurrection,  would  be  itself  denied.*  The  disentanglement 
of  the  Ur-Evangelium,  it  will  thus  be  seen,  is  sufficiently  diffi- 
cult, and  indeed  has  not  been  generally  accepted  as  final ;  but 
the  prejudice  against  this  method  is  immensely  increased  by 
the  wholly  arbitrary  way  in  which  the  remaining  portions — 
connected  with  the  names  of  Matthew  or  either  of  the  other 
Synoptists — are  accepted  or  denied,  as  suits  the  author. 

With  regard  to  the  writings  of  John,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
is  remarkable  how  conservative  Eichhorn  proves  to  be,  steering 
clear,  as  he  does,  without,  of  course,  foreseeing  one  of  them,  of 
all  the  conclusions  of  the  Tubingen  school,  which  has  claimed 
for  itself  something  like  critical  omniscience.  He  unhesitat- 
ingly accepts  the  fourth  Gospel,  not  so  much  on  the  ground  of 
external  testimony,  as  from  the  confirmation  of  this  by  the  in- 
ternal character  of  the  work  as  suitable  to  the  age  and  to  John 
the  Apostle.  His  view  of  the  personality  of  the  Saviour  is  low 
enough ;  and  his  explanation  of  the  Logos  doctrine,  as  an  at- 
tempt which  the  times  demanded  to  clothe  the  older  Messianic 
teaching  in  forms  suitable  to  the  Alexandrian  and  Hellenistic 
mind,  cannot  be  sustained ;  but  he  rightly  contends  that  the 
peculiarities  of  the  Gospel  are  only  met  by  the  union,  in  its 
author,  of  Palestinian  birth  and  training  with  Hellenistic  cult- 
ure; and  hence  he  upholds  the  tradition  as  to  John's  Asia 
Minor  residence.  Even  before  the  new  debate  begun  by  Bret- 
schneider,  in  1820,  there  were  German  theologians  inclined  to 
the  negative  side;  but  Eichhorn  thus  refuses  them  a  hearing: 
44  The  case,  in  my  opinion,  is  so  completely  settled  in  favor  of 
the  Gospel,  that  to  refute  at  length  the  difficulties  started  is 
superfluous."!  With  equal  readiness  he  accepts  the  three  epis- 
tles,}; and  even  the  Apocalypse  is  defended  as  the  work  of  the 
Apostle — and  that  not  at  all  in  the  Tubingen  sense,  as  breath- 
ing a  Jewish  rather  than  Pauline  spirit,  but  as  in  full  harmony 
with  the  fourth  Gospel,  differing  only  as  poetry  from  prose.§ 

*  "  Einleitnng  in  das  Neue  Testament,"  i.  pp.  486-490. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  240,  note.  |  Ibid.,  ii.  pp.  320-330. 

§  Ibid.,  ii.  pp.  375-388. 


UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— KATIONALISM.          133 

In  this  acceptance  of  the  Apocalypse  Eichhorn  even  opposes 
Michaelis  and  Semler;  and  hardly  anything  has  been  better 
said  by  the  orthodox,  though  he  does  not  regard  its  symbol- 
ism as  pointing  to  more  than  the  downfall  of  Judaism  and  Pa- 
ganism, and  to  the  final  blessedness.*  In  equally  striking  con- 
flict with  the  future  Tubingen  school  is  his  view  of  the  integ- 
rity and  genuineness  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles ;  and  the  cur- 
rent is  now  really  going  back,  from  Baur  and  Schwcgler,  to  this 
leader  of  rationalism,  who  here  represents  so  ably  the  tradition- 
al position. f  It  would  be  too  much  to  expect  further  concur- 
rence; and  hence  Eichhorn  accepts  only  ten  of  Paul's  Epis- 
tles, denying  him  the  pastoral  ones  and  that  to  the  Hebrews, 
though  the  former  have  much  that  is  Pauline,  and  may  be  from 
the  Apostle's  scholars,  while  the  latter  is  in  every  way  remark- 
able as  a  Christian  interpretation  of  Judaism — to  which,  how- 
ever, Eichhorn  does  not  commit  himself — and  probably  from 
some  Christian  of  the  Alexandrine  school,  the  date  being  be- 
fore the  fall  of  Jerusalem.];  James,  however,  he  accepts,  pro- 
nouncing its  doctrine  in  harmony  with  Paul,  as  also  1  Peter, 
ascribing  its  Paulinizing  features  to  the  probable  influence  of 
Mark;  while  even  the  Second  Epistle  of  Peter  and  Jude  are 
set  aside  with  no  small  forbearance  and  allowance  in  their  fa- 
vor ;  for  2  Peter  may  have  been  written  by  a  scholar  of  Peter 
after  his  death,  and  Jude  probably  falls  before  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem,  and  might  thus  have  been  used,  as  Eichhorn  be- 
lieves, by  the  author  of  2  Peter.§ 

I  have  gone  into  these  details,  once  for  all,  to  show  that  it 
was  not  merely  by  its  free  handling  of  the  canon  of  Scripture 
that  the  rationalism  of  this  school  led  to  such  fatal  results. 
However  important  the  canon,  and  injurious  its  mutilation,  the 
question  of  faith  in  a  true  revelation,  and  the  submission  of 

*  "Einleitung  in  das  Netie  Testament,"  ii.  pp.  391-493., 

f  Ibid.  There  is  something  almost  touching  in  the  honest,  simple- 
hearted  ignorance  with  which  Eichhorn  speaks,  with  the  Tubingen  mines 
beneath  his  feet:  "These  examples  will  suffice  to  prove  the  age  and 
credibility  of  the  Acts  from  the  connection  of  their  contents  with  the 
state  of  the  world  in  the  period  A.D.  32  to  Go;  if  this  should  ever  be 
doubted  (as,  so  far  as  I  know,  it  never  yet  has  been),  the  instances  could 
be  greatly  increased." — Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament,  ii.  pp.  65-71. 

t  The  references  in  the  "Einleitung"  are:  to  the  Pastoral  Epistles, 
vol.  iii.  pp.  385-410;  to  Hebrews,  iii.  pp.  506,  507. 

§  For  James,  see  "Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament,"  iii.  575-581  ; 
for  1  Peter,  iii.  614  ;  for  2  Peter,  iii.  630-636  ;  for  Jude,  iii.  655,  656. 


134      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

reason  to  it,  is  still  more  important.  This  Eichhorn  and  his 
contemporaries  wanted,  in  regard  even  to  the  admitted  doc- 
trines of  Paul  and  the  other  apostles.  Even  their  conception 
of  these  doctrines  is  very  low ;  and  the  summaries,  for  exam- 
ple, which  Eichhorn  gives  of  Paul's  Epistles  represent  him  as 
only  a  gifted  human  teacher,  continuing  after  his  conversion, 
due  partly  to  a  flash  of  lightning,  the  work  of  one  still  more 
gifted,  who  had  left  the  doctrines  of  God,  Providence,  and  Im- 
mortality in  such  a  state  as  to  need  further  explanation  and 
development.*  But,  however  highly  Christ  may  be  exalted  as 
a  teacher — as,  for  example,  in  speaking  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Oolossians — there  is  no  sympathy  with  what  follows  from  this 
admission  in  the  way  of  accepting  his  doctrine  of  salvation ; 
and  thus,  by  a  low  interpretation,  the  results  of  a  so  far  sound 
and  tolerable  canon  are  brought  to  nothing.  The  question  of 
the  canon,  or  even  of  exegesis  in  detail,  is  thus  not  the  vital 
one,  however  grave  each  is,  for  Christianity.  It  is  the  presence 
or  absence  of  sympathy  with  those  radical  ideas  of  revelation 
— sin,  redemption,  grace — which  the  worst  canon  and  the  worst 
interpretation  (if  it  have  any  honesty  at  all)  cannot  but  supply. 
The  canon  of  Eichhorn  was  even  larger  than  that  of  Schleier- 
macher ;  but  who  will  compare  them,  grievously  defective  as 
Schleiermacher  here  is,  in  point  of  sympathy  with  radical  Chris- 
tian truth  and  sentiment?} 

Of  the  many  representatives  of  the  critical  school  who  suc- 
ceeded Eichhorn  it  is  only  necessary  to  mention  Dr.  H.  E.  G. 
Paulus  (1761-1851),  for  many  years  Professor  of  Theology  at 
Heidelberg.  His  most  important  works  are  those  which  bear 
upon  the  life  of  our  Saviour ;  and  he  has  the  merit  of  having 
shown,  in  his  "  Philologisch  -Kritischer  Cornmentar  iiber  das 
Neue  Testament,  1800,"  how  utterly  untenable  the  rationalis- 
tic principle  of  reducing  all  the  supernatural  facts  of  our  Lord's 
life  to  purely  natural  causes  is,  when  consistently  applied.  As 
Toland  regarded  the  pillar  of  cloud  and  fire  as  an  ordinary  sig- 
nal, and  as  Eichhorn  held  something  of  the  same  kind,J  so 
Paulus  perpetually  labors  to  clear  up  the  mistakes  of  those 
who  quite  innocently  exalted,  in  their  narratives,  to  miracle 
what  was  only  natural  fact.  Thus,  Zacharias  in  the  Temple 

*  "Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament,"  iii.  pp.  1-12. 

t  See  Appendix,  Note  II. 

j  **  Einleitung  in  das  Alte  Testament,"  iii.  p.  203. 


UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          135 

fancied  that  the  cloud  of  incense  was  an  angel ;  the  wise  men, 
who  had  lost  sight  of  the  star  in  the  valley,  found  it  again 
from  a  height,  and,  as  they  supposed,  shining  from  the  sky 
over  the  place  where  Jesus  was ;  and  the  dove,  at  the  Baptism, 
only  happened  to  alight  on  the  Saviour's  head. 

This  theory,  involving  so  much  violence  and  absurdity,  was 
finally  exploded  by  Strauss  in  the  first  cast  of  his  "  Leben 
Jesu,"  in  1835.  But  Paulus  was  perfectly  sincere  in  holding 
it;  and  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  afterwards  he  said 
that  it  was  not  so  much  to  remove  the  stumbling-block  of 
miracle  that  the  work  was  written  as  to  bring  out  the  true 
character  of  Jesus  in  harmony  with  Christian  rationalism.  He 
held  that  the  character  of  Jesus  was  perfect,  and  that  this 
alone  was  meant  by  his  being  the  Messiah  and  the  Son  of 
God.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  Paulus  that  he  believed  so  much; 
but  even  a  perfect  humanity  goes  beyond  the  limits  of  expe- 
rience ;  nor  is  a  solution  given  by  the  striking  figure  employed 
by  him  in  his  old  age,  in  a  conversation  with  a  younger  theo- 
logian, that  Jesus  was  a  wonder,  though  not  a  miracle,  like  a 
meteoric  stone,  coming  from  a  higher  world,  and  leaving  its 
mark  in  this.*  Possibly  the  views  of  Paulus  advanced,  as  in 
his  later  years  he  found  himself  surrounded  by  a  returning 
tide  of  faith.  In  a  very  interesting  work,  published  by  him  in 
1830,  and  containing  a  collection  of  his  reviews,  among  others 
that  which  dealt  with  the  celebrated  dissertation  of  Dr.  Hahn 
of  Leipzig,  proposing  to  turn  rationalists  out  of  the  Church, 
he  goes  much  farther  than  Eichhorn  in  accepting  the  testimony 
of  Scripture;  contends  earnestly  that  his  own  negative  con- 
clusions as  to  the  Trinity,  Original  Sin,  and  the  Atonement  are 
supported  by  the  sacred  writers — as  earnestly  as  any  of  the 
orthodox  could  assert  the  opposite — and  while  holding  the  ne- 
cessity of  going  aside  from  Scripture  on  a  limited  number  of 
points,  such  as  demoniacal  possession,  still  appeals  to  it,  with 
confidence,  as  a  rationalistic  book,  which  the  scholasticism  of 
later  creeds  has  corrupted.  No  doubt  the  words  of  Augustine 
standing  on  Dr.  Harm's  title-page  as  a  motto  against  rationalism 
still  apply  to  Paulus :  "  Qni  in  Evangelic  quod  vultis  creditis, 
quod  non  vultis  non  creditis,  vobis  potius  quam  Evangelio 

*  This  remarknhle  comparison  I  remember  to  have  read— I  believe  in 
the  "Studien  und  Kritiken  " — after  the  death  of  Dr.  Paulus;  but  I  can- 
not recover  the  passage. 


136      UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

creditis;"*  but  as  it  has  been  common  to  say  that  the  ration- 
alists of  that  day  admitted  that  Scripture  was  against  them,  it 
was  only  fair  to  Dr.  Paulus  to  show  how  far,  at  least  in  his  case, 
such  an  allegation  would  be  beside  the  truth. f 

Thus  the  great  stream  of  theology  in  the  Universities  had 
descended,  not  without  many  protests  and  some  inconsistencies, 
from  the  supernaturalism  of  Ernesti  and  Michaelis,  till  it  had 
reached,  in  the  end  of  the  century,  the  naturalism  of  Paulus. 
But  we  must  now  turn  to  a  movement  which  may  also  be 
called  critical,  though  arising  in  another  field,  and  which  has 
so  far  unhappily  compromised  the  great  name  of  Lessing, 
through  his  connection  with  the  work  of  Reimarus,  the  Wol- 
fenbiittel  Fragmentist.  It  is  necessary  to  narrate  the  incidents 
affecting  both  together,  and  under  the  name  of  Lessing,  whose 
position  is  the  more  important. 

I  take  the  principal  facts  in  Lessing's  life  for  granted — his 
birth,  as  the  eldest  son  of  a  Lutheran  pastor  at  Camenz,  in 
Upper  Lusatia,  in  1729;  his  great  mastery  in  classical  litera- 
ture acquired  at  school  and  at  Leipzig  in  connection  with  his 
destination  to  the  ministry;  his  preference  of  a  literary  life; 
his  starting  with  Moses  Mendelssohn  and  Nicolai  the  periodical 
Briefe  die  neueste  Literatur  betreffend  in  1759  ;  his  sudden  de- 
parture and  residence  as  secretary  with  General  Tauentzien,  at 
Breslau,  till  1765;  his  equally  sudden  return  to  literature,  and 
his  struggles  in  Berlin  and  Hamburg,  till  his  appointment  by 
the  Grand-duke  of  Brunswick  as  keeper  of  the  Wolfenbiit- 
tel  Library^  an  office  which  he  held  from  1769  till  his  death 
in  1781. 

The  vigor  and  originality  of  Lessing  as  a  dramatic  writer, 
and  not  less  as  a  critic  in  literature  and  art,  are  universally  ac- 
knowledged; but,  great  as  his  influence  was,  he  can  hardly  be 
held  to  have  made  the  same  mark  in  theology.  Probably  the 
rationalistic  movement  would  have  reached  the  same  issues 
without  him,  though  his  acuteness,  learning,  and  power  un- 
doubtedly contributed  much  to  its  development.  But  he  had 
too  many  sympathies  in  his  nature  to  act  fully  in  any  one  di- 
rection. The  popular  philosophy  found  him  so  far  an  associate 


*  "  Contra  Faustum,"  xvii.  p.  3  ;   "  Opera,"  viii.  p.  219. 

t  The  title  of  Dr.  Paultis's  work  is  as  follows  :  "Berichtigende  Resultate 
aus  dem  neuesten  Versnch  des  Supranaturalismus  gegen  den  biblisch- 
christlichen  Rationalismus."  Wiesbaden,  1830. 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          137 

of  Nicolai  and  Mendelssohn,  and  an  editor  of  Reimarus ;  the 
critical,  an  ally  of  Eichhorn  and  Paulas  in  assailing  the  letter 
of  the  Bible  in  his  discussions  on  the  Resurrection,  and  yet 
striving,  and  in  a  deeper  sense  than  they,  to  preserve  its  spirit, 
in  his  "  Education  of  the  Human  Race ;"  while  the  mysterious 
charge  of  pantheism,  brought  out  in  the  well-known  disclosures 
of  Jacobi,  shows  that  there  was  in  him  enough  of  bent  in  that 
direction  to  sympathize  with  the  tendencies  that  were  soon  to 
find  utterance  in  Schelling.  Anyhow  regarded,  the  religious 
side  of  Lessing  is  a  problem,  and  some  parts  of  his  conduct  are 
as  unjustifiable  as  they  are  unaccountable ;  but  the  whole  facts 
seem  better  explained  by  ascribing  to  him  such  a  various  sym- 
pathy, and  with  this  a  certain  indecision  and  scepticism,  than 
by  any  other  theory. 

Lessing  had  been  some  years  in  Wolfenbuttel,  and  had  pub- 
lished two  selections  of  works  found  in  its  library.  Among 
the  first  of  these  was,  curiously  enough,  a  tract  of  Leibnitz 
defending  the  received  doctrine  as  to  the  duration  of  future 
punishments,  which  Lessing  also  so  far  supported  against  Eber- 
hardt's  "  New  Apology  for  Socrates,"  by  showing  that  Eber- 
hardt  here  made  Socrates  contradict  Plato.  The  second 
embraced  a  little  treatise  on  a  question  of  art.  Then  came 
out  under  his  editorship  a  series  of  fragments  of  an  entirely 
different  description,  which  excited  the  widest  sensation.  Of 
this  series,  known  as  the  "  Wolfenbuttel  Fragments,"  and  of 
the  author  of  the  work,  Hermann  Samuel  Reimarus,  we  have 
now  to  speak. 

Reimarus  was  born  in  the  same  year  with  Voltaire,  1694,  in 
Hamburg,  where  his  father  was  one  of  the  masters  in  the  Jo- 
hanneum,  and  his  future  father-in-law,  Fabricius,  so  well-known 
by  his  descriptive  catalogues  of  Greek  and  Latin  writers,  was 
another ;  and  he  himself,  after  being  trained  under  these  schol- 
ars, and  afterward  in  Jena,  abandoning  the  ministry,  became  ul- 
timately teacher  in  the  Gymnasium  of  his  native  city,  an  office 
which  he  held  for  forty  years,  till  his  death  in  1768.*  It  was 
his  work  to  teach  Hebrew  and  Oriental  languages ;  he  was  an 
admirable  classical  scholar,  as  appears  by  an  edition  of  Dio 
Cassius ;  and  he  wrote  several  treatises  on  Natural  Religion, 
evincing  a  great  knowledge  of  natural  science.  The  best- 
known  of  these  is  entitled  "The  Principal  Truths  of  Natural 

*  Strnuss's  "licinuirus,"pp.  5-7.    Leipzig,  1862. 


138       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Religion  Defended  and  Illustrated."  It  was  published  in  1755, 
and  may  be  read  in  an  old  English  translation  of  date  1766, 
which  conveys  a  favorable  idea  of  the  vigor  with  which,  against 
Lucretius,  La  Mettrie,  and  other  disciples  of  Epicurus,  he  up- 
holds the  argument  from  design,  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of 
Providence,  and  the  doctrine  of  Immortality.  There  is  here  a 
trace  of  Wolff,  but  none  of  the  popular  philosophy  with  which 
his  name  has  been  connected;  and  it  could  never  have  been 
suspected  that  he  had  any  quarrel  with  Christianity  ;  for  he 
speaks  respectfully  of  Moses,  and  his  life  as  a  teacher  must  have 
involved  compliances  which  suggested  a  full  belief  in  the  Gos- 
pel. Yet  it  is  sad  to  think  that  for  at  least  the  last  thirty  years 
of  his  life  he  was  an  unbeliever,  and  was  preparing  one  of  the 
most  hostile  works  against  the  Bible  in  its  whole  history.  This 
work,  which  was  only  finished  shortly  before  his  death,  bore 
the  title,"  Apologie  oder  Schutzschrift  fur  die  vernunftigen  Ve- 
rehrer  Gottes."*  It  is  still  to  some  extent  unpublished.  Frag- 
ments of  it  were  edited  by  Lessing  in  the  way  I  shall  afterward 
explain  ;  some  other  portions  have  appeared  in  German  peri- 
odicals or  separately  ;  but  the  only  account  of  the  whole  is  in 
the  summaries  and  large  extracts  published  in  the  work  of 
Strauss  upon  Reimarus  in  1862.  With  the  help  of  this,  I  shall 
speak  of  the  general  views  of  Reimarus,  and  then,  from  his  own 
works,  state  the  connection  of  Lessing  with  this  subject. 

From  the  data  before  us  it  appears  that  Reimarus  is  almost 
the  only  one  of  his  countrymen  who  brings  the  severe  charges 
of  the  extreme  English  Deists  against  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment, and  who  transplants  the  style  of  Voltaire  to  Germany. 
His  attacks  upon  the  Old  Testament  I  shall  mostly  pass  over, 
as  they  largely  repeat  Bayle,  Voltaire,  and  others,  in  ascribing 
to  Abraham,  Moses,  Samuel,  and  David  the  lowest  principles  of 
action.  There  is  one  view  which,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  original 
— that  Aaron  and  Miriam  set  up  the  golden  calf  in  the  hope 
to  be  thus  rid  of  Moses,  and  that  he,  suspecting  some  evil,  and 
returning  from  the  Mount,  secured  himself  and  propitiated  them 
by  arranging  the  sacrificial  system,  with  all  its  perquisites,  in 
his  brother's  favor.f  In  the  other  writings  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment Reimarus  finds  no  compensation  for  the  failure  of  its 

*  "Apology  or  Defence  of  the  Rational  Worshippers  of  God."    Strauss's 
"Reiraarus,"  p.  20. 
f  Strauss's  "  Reimarus,"pp.  108-110. 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          139 

histories.  The  Psalms  reveal  only  the  character  of  persons 
who  sing  and  pray,  while,  like  David,  they  are  full  of  revenge 
and  selfishness ;  the  Proverbs,  though  containing  good  maxims, 
such  as  natural  reason  suggests,  have  nothing  worthy  of  a  re- 
ligion specially  revealed ;  and  the  Prophets  merely  uphold  the 
worship  of  Jehovah,  which  has  already  proved  so  ineffectual.* 
He  grants,  indeed,  as  taught  in  them,  the  doctrine  of  a  Mes- 
siah, and  of  the  line  of  David,  pious  and  righteous,  who  should 
be  a  Deliverer,  and  who  was  accordingly  expected  in  that  sense 
(and  here,  like  Strauss,  he  overturns  Collins) ;  but  he  wholly 
denies  that  the  Messiah  is  set  forth  in  a  suffering  character,  or 
in  any  higher  light  than  a  great  earthly  monarch ;  and  he  goes 
through  the  whole  of  what  has  been  called  the  Christology  of 
the  Old  Testament  to  refute  such  an  interpretation.! 

When  we  come  to  the  New  Testament  we  find  that  Jesus  is 
the  only  one  of  the  Biblical  characters  of  whom  Reimarus  has 
a  good  word  to  say.  He  grants  him  a  high  and  pure  morality. 
Of  his  summation  of  law  and  prophets  in  love  to  God  and  man 
he  remarks :  "  How  could  the  essence  of  true  worship  and  of 
man's  chief  duties  to  himself  and  others  be  more  shortly  or 
better  expressed?"  That  God  is  perfect  is  the  true  practical 
idea.  The  Lord's  Prayer  is  a  model  prayer;  and  the  golden 
rule  is  just,  when  understood  to  prescribe,  not  what  we  should 
avoid,  but  actually  do.  "  Such  doctrines  are  great,  noble,  nay, 
divine,  and  we  shall  rarely  or  almost  never  find  them  among 
heathen  moralists,  at  least  as  based  on  so  universal  a  phil- 
anthropy.'^ But  while  Jesus  thus  advanced  so  far  by  his 
preaching  of  repentance,  including  this  morality,  all  was  ruined 
by  the  addition,  "  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand." 
He  supposed  himself  to  be  the  Jewish  Messiah,  taking  up  into 
this  idea  worldly  rule,  extended  to  the  heathen ;  and  his  dis- 
ciples fully  shared  his  expectations.  There  is  no  evidence  that 
he  had  any  more  spiritual  view,  and  all  that  seems  to  favor  this 
in  the  Gospels — as,  for  example,  his  prediction  of  his  own  suf- 
ferings and  death-^is  unhistoricaV  The  character  of  Jesus  thus 
suffers  at  the  hands  of  Reimarus,  not  so  much  in  his  misquot- 
ing  Old  Testament  texts  in  application  to  himself,  as  in  giving 
himself  false  credit  by  a  scene  between  himself  and  the  Bap- 
tist, where  an  affected  ignorance  is  brought  in  to  add  weight  to 

*  Strauss's  "Reimarus,"  pp.  132, 155, 156.         f  Ibid.,  pp.  156-158. 
t  Ibid.,  pp.  18,'5,  184. 


140      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

testimony,  and  by  miracles  which  he  did  not  care  to  have  in- 
vestigated, as  well  as  by  shrinking  from  collision  with  his  ene- 
mies, which  a  suffering  Messiah  could  not  have  done.  As  a 
proof  of  his  worldly  views,  Reimarus  refers  to  his  cry  of  deser- 
tion on  the  cross,  which,  if  uttered,  was  a  confession  of  failure.* 
Such  a  failure  took  place  when  he  attempted  by  his  triumphal 
entry  to  set  up  his  kingdom;  for  not  only  had  he  miscalcu- 
lated, but  by  his  clearing  of  the  Temple  he  broke  the  peace, 
and  also  by  his  invectives  gave  the  authorities — though  "  he 
taught  an  infinitely  better  morality  and  religion  than  the 
Scribes  and  Pharisees" — a  good  cause  against  Him, so  that 
"the  Sanhedrim  could  not  act  otherwise  than  it  did,  and  Jesus 
is  not  innocent,  but  died  for  his  own  crime."f  Such  is  the  sad 
incoherence  of  Reimarus's  scheme,  and  he  can  only  lament 
"that  Jesus,  by  his  aim  to  be  the  Messiah,  and  the  doubtful 
and  disorderly  means  taken  by  him  ito  gain  his  point,  has  so 
stained  and  obscured  the  memory  of  his  services  to  practical 
religion."  "  Still,"  he  adds, "  we  must  not  cease  to  value  as 
they  deserve,  and  to  apply  to  our  good,  his  lessons  of  piety, 
philanthropy,  and  inward  reformation."]; 

The  disciples  now  adjusted  the  plan  to  altered  circumstances. 
Knowing  that  a  minority  of  the  people  expected  a  suffering 
Messiah,  they  gave  out  that  Jesus  was  that  Messiah,  and  that 
he  had  foretold  his  own  sufferings  and  death  and  resurrection, 
and,  in  connection  with  these,  the  redemption  of  the  world  and 
the  extension  of  his  kingdom  to  the  Gentiles.  They  invented 
the  story  of  the  resurrection  and  of  the  different  appearances 
of  their  Master,  and,  to  give  all  credit,  stole  away  the  body, 
which  they  could  easily  do,  as  the  garden  was  in  their  own 
hands,  and  the  Roman  guard  was  a  later  addition  to  the  story ; 
and  then,  having  added  the  tale  of  the  ascension,  appeared  in 
Jerusalem  to  found  a  kingdom  different  from  that  of  Jesus, 
but  with  the  same  worldly  motives.§  Such  is  the  substance  of 
the  celebrated  discussion  on  "  The  Plan  of  Jesus  and  his  Disci- 


*  Stranss's  "  Reimarus,"  pp.  187,  188.  Reimarus  here,  probably  with- 
out remembering  it,  repeats  the  accusation  of  Celsus  (Origen  against  Cels., 
§  ii.  24) :  "  Why  does  he  entreat,  lament,  and  pray  to  escape  the  fear  of 
death  ?'' 

t  "Konnte  der  hohe  Rath  nicht  anders  handeln  als  er  gehandelt  hat, 
und  ist  demnach  Jesus  nicht  unschuldig,  sondern  urn  seines  eigenen  Ver- 
brechens  willen  gestorben." — Reimarus,  p.  198. 

t  Strauss's  "  Reimarus,"  p.  198.  §  Ibid.,  pp.  210-215. 


UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          141 

pies."  It  would  be  a  waste  of  words  to  refute  such  a  mon- 
strosity, intellectual  and  moral.  It  can  only  be  refuted  as  Eu- 
sebius  has  done,  long  before  it  appeared,  by  putting  a  speech 
into  the  mouth  of  the  leader  of  the  Apostles,  laying  out  the 
plan,  and  exhorting  his  brethren  to  go  out  and  preach  truth 
by  falsehood,  and  gain  worldly  ends  by  torture  and  death.* 
Gigantic  indeed  must  have  been  the  counter-stroke  that  ena- 
bled the  apostles,  when  crushed  down  by  the  crucifixion,  in  so 
short  a  time  to  invent  a  new  system  of  doctrine,  including  the 
Trinity,  Incarnation,  Atonement,  and  universal  kingdom  of  Je- 
sus, and  to  adapt  all  this  to  their  new  circumstances.  They 
had  also  to  arrange  and  mutually  rehearse  the  narratives  of  va- 
rious apparitions,  which,  however,  was  not  so  consistent  but  that 
Reimarus  discovers  in  it  flagrant  contradictions;  and,  last  of  all, 
there  was  before  them  the  equal  difficulty  of  achieving  success. 
This  success  Reimarus  accounts  for  by  saying  that  they  stilled 
their  own  remorse  of  conscience,  like  ancient  law-givers  in  gen- 
eral, by  persuading  themselves  that  the  good  of  the  world  re- 
quired such  measures,  and  then  rose  to  a  boundless  enthusiasm 
— an  enthusiasm  which  led  to  the  scene  of  Pentecost;  that  they 
originated  a  community  of  goods,  which  was  a  powerful  though 
a  soon  exhausted  means  of  proselytism  ;  that  they  kindled  hopes 
of  an  immediate  return  of  Jesus  and  of  a  share  in  his  kingdom, 
which  men  eagerly  took  up  in  spite  of  his  rejection  and  death ; 
and  also  that  they  made  way  by  the  report  and  appearance  of 
continued  miracles,  not  one  of  which,  however,  was  true.  It  is 
rather  wonderful,  after  all  this,  that  Reimarus  adds  as  a  fifth 
attraction  the  pious  walk  of  the  early  Christians  according  to 
Christ's  exalted  rules,  making  this  remark:  "As  to  opinions, 
there  may  be  difference  when  their  objects  are  remote,  or  rest 
on  foreign  testimony ;  but  virtue  is  a  thing  that  all  feel  and  re- 
spect.'^ What  room  there  was  for  virtue  in  such  a  society  he 
has  himself  shown  ;  and  in  his  character  of  the  Apostle  Paul 
he  annihilates  every  feature  of  excellence,  bringing  him  down 
to  the  level  of  pride,  jealousy,  and  hypocrisy,  on  which  stood 
the  so-called  heroes  of  the  Old  Testament.  Where,  then,  was 
the  lever  by  which  the  Apostles  moved  the  world?  When  the 
common  purse  was  empty,  and  the  thousand  years'  kingdom 

*  This  remarkable  speech  is  to  be  found  in  "  Demonstratio  Evangelica," 
book  iii.  §§  113,  114,  p.  203-207.     Migne's  edition. 
t  Strauss's  ';  Reimarus,"  pp.  233-244. 


142      UNBELIEF   IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTUKY. 

still  hopelessly  distant — as  Reimarus  confesses  it  could  not  long 
be  expected — could  enthusiasm  and  false  miracles  and  doubtful 
morals  still  prevail  ?  To  questions  like  these  Reimarus  has  given 
no  answer,  and  could  give  none.  Indeed,  what  hope  could  "one 
have  for  the  human  race,  what  respect  for  himself  as  a  member 
of  it,  if  the  greatest  religion  the  world  has  ever  known  could 
thus  arise  and  fill  the  earth  ? 

We  are  wholly  unable  to  see  what  fascination  a  scheme  like 
this  could  have  for  Lessing,  or  how  he  could  so  earnestly  desire 
to  make  it  known  after  its  author's  death.  His  acquaintance 
with  Reimarus  was  only  imperfect,  and  acquired  during  the 
last  year  of  his  life;  though  during  the  two  following  years, 
ere  leaving  Hamburg,  he  came  to  know  his  son  and  daughter 
intimately,  and  maintained  with  them  a  close  correspondence. 
As  the  father  did  not  judge  that  the  time  had  come  for  the 
publication  of  his  work,  his  children  resisted  the  importunities 
of  Lessing;  and  only  yielded  on  his  promise  to  keep  the  au- 
thorship an  entire  secret.  It  is  not  absolutely  certain  that 
Lessing  had  seen  the  whole  work;  but  Strauss  regards  this  as 
having  all  probability  in  its  favor;  and  as  the  family  had  al- 
lowed him  to  see  in  their  home  a  first  draft,  so  they  also  sent 
at  his  request  copies  of  any  amended  portions  that  he  might 
require,  as  the  work  had  been  constantly  retouched,  almost  till 
the  date  of  its  author's  death.*  Lessing  then  adopted  the  un- 
happy expedient  of  giving  out  that  he  had  found  the  work  in 
the  Ducal  library,  and  accordingly  edited  it  under  that  repre- 
sentation. The  first  fragment  came  out  in  1774,  and  bore  the 
title  "  On  the  Toleration  of  Deists,"  that  being  supposed  to  be 
the  least  offensive  to  begin  with.  What  liberties  Lessing  al- 
lowed himself  may  be  seen  from  these  words  of  the  preface, 
which,  with  some  notes,  accompanied  the  publication  :  "  They 
are,  as  I  say,  fragments  of  a  work,  but  I  cannot  decide  whether 
of  a  work  actually  finished  and  destroyed,  or  of  one  never  com- 
pleted. For  they  have  no  universal  title ;  their  author  is  no- 
where given ;  and  I  have  by  no  means  been  able  to  discover 
how  and  when  they  came  into  our  library.  Nay,  I  am  not  cer- 
tain that  they  are  fragments  of  one  work,  but  I  conclude  as 
much  from  this,  that  they  have  all  one  object,  and  all  bear  upon 
revealed  religion,  and  more  especially  the  criticism  of  Bible 
history."  Lessing  goes  even  so  far  as  to  suggest  deceptively 

*  Strauss's  "  Reimurns,"  ]>p.  13-16. 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMAN V.— RATIONALISM.  143 

a  false  author  for  the  book,  naming  a  well-known  Deist,  John 
Lorenz  Schmidt,  who  had  not  only  translated  the  Bible,  but 
Tindal's  "Christianity  as  Old  as  the  Creation."  "Since,  to 
judge  by  the  handwriting  and  the  external  appearance  of  his 
papers,  they  may  be  about  seventy  years  old ;  since,  from  many 
passages  there  reveals  itself  an  unusual  acquaintance  with  the 
Hebrew  language,  and  the  author  reasons  throughout  on  the 
principles  of  the  Wolffian  philosophy — all  these  circumstances 
together  have  suggested  to  me  a  man  who  lived  about  the 
aforesaid  time  here  in  Wolfenbuttel,  and  under  the  protection 
of  a  wise  and  kind  ruler  found  the  toleration  which  the  wild 
orthodoxy  of  the  times  would  have  denied  him  in  the  rest 
of  Europe — I  mean  Schmidt,  the  Wertheim  translator  of  the 
Bible."*t 

It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  Lessing  had  any  prevailing 
sympathy  with  the  Fragmentist,  and  yet  we  find  him  restlessly 
active  to  bring  his  work  to  the  light.  In  the  end  of  1774  he 
is  engaged  in  negotiations  with  Voss,  the  Berlin  bookseller, 
with  a  view  to  its  publication  with  his  own  name  on  the  title- 
page  as  editor,  though  his  friends  Nicolai  and  Mendelssohn 
most  strongly  dissuaded  him  from  this  step.  He  writes  to  his 
own  brother  of  his  intention  to  "  play  the  theologians  a  little 
comedy  "  by  this  publication,  which,  in  allusion  to  a  recent 
work  of  Semler,  "A  Free  Examination  of  tlic  Canon,"  he  pro- 
poses to  call  "A  Still  Freer  Examination  of  the  Canon  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testament."  The  theologians  in  question  were 
those  of  Semler's  school,  for  whom  he  had  less  respect  than  for 
the  orthodox,  believing  that  their  attempts  to  explain  away 
miracles  only  weakened  their  cause,  and  that,  in  seeking  to 
make  men  rational  Christians,  they  made  them  highly  irration- 
al philosophers. J  It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  his  wish  to  ex- 
pose the  half-and-half  position  of  the  newer  theologians  was 

*  "Correspondance."     K.  G.  Lessing,  Feb.  2,  1774. 

t  Strauss,  who  justifies  and  even  admires  the  life-long  silence  of  Rei- 
marus  in  regard  to  his  Deism,  while  conducting  all  the  while  the  work  of 
a  Christian  teacher,  sees  apparently  nothing  wrong  in  the  preface  above 
quoted,  and  in  other  liberties  of  Lessing:  for  he  speaks  approvingly  of  the 
"false  scent  on  which  he  led  the  curiosity  of  the  public  and  the  hatred 
of  theologians"  (p.  17);  but  he  does  not  venture  to  quote  the  passages 
in  the  text,  which  are  translated  from  Lessing's  Werke,  p.  822,  1  vol.  edi- 
tion. Goschen,  Leipzig,  1841. 

I  Letters  to  his  brother,  Feb.  2  and  Nov.  11,  1774.  Lessing's  Werke, 
pp.  91)8-1000. 


144      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

one  motive  for  his  action.  However,  difficulties  arose,  and 
among  others  those  connected  with  the  censorship;  and  then, 
as  from  his  position  in  Wolfenbiittel  he  was  free  from  this 
hinderance,  he  at  lengthen  1777,  edited  other  rive  fragments 
(so-called),  covering  the  origin  of  the  work  with  another  set  of 
mystifications:  "I  could  hardly  furnish  at  once  the  strongest 
and  boldest  parts ;  the  papers  are  still  in  too  great  confusion ; 
and  the  thread  often  breaks  off  where  one  would  least  expect 
it,  so  that,  till  I  am  better  acquainted  with  them,  I  content  my- 
self with  the  following  fragments,  which  I  submit  without  fur- 
ther introduction."*  The  fragments  were  five  in  number — the 
first  "On  the  Decrying  of  Reason  from  the  Pulpits;"  the  sec- 
ond "  On  the  Impossibility  of  a  Revelation  which  all  Men  could 
be  reasonably  called  upon  to  Believe ;"  the  third  "  On  the  Pas- 
sage of  the  Israelites  through  the  Red  Sea,"  heaping  up  the 
difficulties  since  repeated  by  Dr.  Colenso ;  the  fourth  went  to 
show  that  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  not  written  to 
reveal  a  religion;  and  the  fifth  and  last,  which  was  the  most 
important,  opened  up  ten  contradictions  in  the  Gospel  narra- 
tives of  the  Resurrection.  These  fragments  Lessing  followed 
by  a  set  of  short  essays,  in  which,  while  desiring  to  see  them 
fully  replied  to  by  the  orthodox,  he  disclaimed  agreement  with 
the  author's  position.  He  urged  that  it  was  unreasonable  to 
deny  the  possibility  of  a  revelation  and  of  miracles ;  that  the 
passage  through  the  Red  Sea  being  a  miracle,  the  natural  diffi- 
culties which  Reimarus  started  were  not  conclusive ;  and  in 
particular,  in  regard  to  the  Resurrection,  it  was  one  thing  for 
contradiction  to  have  been  found  between  the  original  apos- 
tolic witnesses,  and  another  thing  between  subsequent  record- 
ers of  their  testimony,  like  the  Evangelists;  and  that, as  there 
was  no  evidence  of  such  fatal  contradiction  of  the  first  sort, 
and  as  the  cause  had  been  long  won,  its  success  was  now  a 
presumption  of  credibility,  and  the  case  could  not  be  fairly 
reopened. 

At  the  end  of  these  notes  Lessing  published  more  than  the 
half  of  an  essay,  which  he  afterwards  issued  in  full  in  1780, 
on  "The  Education  of  the  Human  Race."  The  design  of  this 
was  to  separate  his  position  more  clearly  from  that  of  Reima- 
rus, because,  in  the  paper  in  question,  he  professes  his  belief  in 
revelation.  What  education  is  to  the  individual,  revelation  is 

*  Lessing's  Werke,  p.  824. 


UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          145 

to  the  species ;  and  though  Lessing  does  not  hold  that  any- 
thing is  revealed  which  the  human  race  might  not  ultimately 
have  reached  hy  its  own  powers,  yet,  as  in  the  parallel  case 
of  education,  there  is  a  more  early,  rapid,  and  certain  develop- 
ment, than  would  otherwise  have  been  possible.  The  Jewish 
and  Christian  dispensations  are  such  stages  in  the  education  of 
the  world,  from  which  miracles  and  prophecies  are  not  ex- 
cluded. The  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament  and  of  the  New 
were  the  lesson-books  (Elementar-bucher)  of  this  process ;  and 
hence  Lessing  judges  very  differently  of  their  worth  from  the 
Fragmentist.  The  Jews  thus  learned  the  oneness  of  God, 
which  was  further  developed,  though  really  lying  in  thcvr  own 
Scriptures,  by  their  contact  with  the  old  Persian  religion  dur- 
ing the  Captivity.  Room  was  left  for  immortality,  which,  an- 
ticipated so  far  by  the  best  of  the  people,  was  first  clearly 
taught  by  Christ  in  connection  with  inward  purity  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  it ;  and  to  all  this  Lessing  adds,  that  in  the  Script- 
ures of  the  New  Testament  there  are  hints  and  indications  of 
such  mysteries  as  the  Trinity,  the  Incarnation,  Original  Sin, 
and  the  Atonement,  which  serve  a  useful  purpose.  Thus  far, 
the  race  has  been  helped  on  by  revelation  with  its  school- 
books;  but  in  the  New  Testament  there  is  a  foreshadowing 
of  a  third  stage  beyond  alike  Old  Testament  and  New,  when 
goodness  shall  be  loved  for  its  own  sake,  and  the  human  race 
shall  reach  its  manhood.* 

These  fragments,  and  the  conduct  of  Lessing  in  publishing 
them,  produced  a  wide  commotion,  which  his  notes  and  eluci- 
dations tended  but  little  to  allay.  Of  the  assaults  which  came 
from  various  quarters  the  principal  was  that  by  Pastor  Goetze, 
in  Hamburg,  who  was  hardly  qualified  to  grapple  with  Lessing, 
and  whom  the  latter  supposed  to  have  attacked  him  as  the 
result  of  a  personal  quarrel.  It  is  only  to  be  remarked,  on 
Goetze's  side,  that  he  did  not  deny  the  distinction  which  Les- 
sing drew  between  a  revelation  and  the  record  of  it  (a  distinc- 
tion to  which  hardly  any  apologist  of  Christianity  can  be  in- 
sensible), but  only  urged  that  Lessing  had  pushed  this  too  far, 
so  as  to  throw  over  the  Bible  in  order  to  save  Christianity  in  a 
Romish  sense.  Lessing,  on  the  other  hand,  always  writes  as  a 

*  Lessing's  Werke,  pp.  939-946.  The  outline  of  the  "Emehung  des 
Mensfhengeschlechts  "  is  given  above  once  for  all,  though  published  in 
two  parts. 


146       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH    CKNTUHY. 

Christian,  and  a  better  defender  of  Christianity  than  its  own 
advocates;  and  his  polemic,  which  runs  through  many  pam- 
phlets, among  them  a  whole  series  called  "  Anti-Goetze,"  is  de- 
signed, abating  the  wit  and  sarcasm  with  which  he  treats  his 
antagonist,  to  show  how  needful  it  was,  in  the  face  of  contra- 
dictions which  could  not  easily  be  harmonized,  and  other  im- 
perfections in  the  narrative,  to  lay  stress  on  the  difference  be- 
tween the  substance  of  Christianity  and  its  Biblical  records, 
and  to  prove  how  well  this  could  be  done  without  injuring 
revelation.  It  is  well  known  that  here  Coleridge,  in  his  "Con- 
fessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit,''  has  taken  substantially  the 
/*v  same  ground  with  Lessing.  This  no  doubt  may  be  done  in 
arguing  for  the  general  truth  of  Christianity  against  unbeliev- 
ers; but  the  question  of  inspiration  is  not  thereby  reduced  to 
unimportance ;  and  we  ought,  I  think,  in  the  widest  view  of 
the  facts,  to  go  beyond  Lessing  and  Coleridge  in  contending 
for  the  full  inspiration  of  the  Scripture  record. 

The  most  deeply  painful  thing  in  this  controversy,  in  com- 
parison of  which  the  unmeasured  severity  of  his  satire  is  a 
slight  offence,  is  the  length  to  which  Lessing  allowed  himself 
to  go  in  defending  the  incognito  of  Reimarus.  He  affirmed 
that  he  had  come  to  know  that  the  work,  of  the  existence  of 
which  he  was  till  now  aware  only  in  fragments,  was  found  in 
a  completed  form  elsewhere,  and  that  manuscript  copies  of  it 
were  in  circulation.  lie  denounced  as  a  lie  the  report  that 
c/  Reimarus  was  the  author — a  report  which  had  soon  become 
/  current;  and  he  even  complained  of  the  contradiction  which 
the  orthodox  in  Hamburg  gave  to  this  report,  as  the  indirect 
spreading  of  a  calumny.*  The  necessities  of  the  controversy 
required  him  to  publish  sooner  than  he  had  intended,  and  not 
in  the  same  series  with  the  rest,  but  in  a  separate  form,  the 
last  and  worst  fragment,  which  bore  the  title,  "On  the  Plan 
of  Jesus  and  his  Disciples,"  and  which,  as  will  be  remem- 
bered, charged  the  Saviour  with  worldly  ambition  and  the  dis- 
ciples with  fraud.  It  came  out  in  1778,  and  with  the  same  al- 
leged ignorance  of  its  authorship ;  and  thus,  by  a  remarkable 
conjuncture  of  circumstances,  a  work  intended  to  convict  the 
.  Christian  religion  of  originating  in  fraud  was  itself  published 
/  in  connection  with  a  series  of  deviations  from  truth. 

*  Werke,  "Anti-Goetze,"  No.  1  (p.  897),  compared  with   preface  to 
"Z\\eck  Je.su."  etc.  (p.  910),  and  "Anti-Goetze, "No.  10  (p.  915). 


UNBELIEF   IX   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.  147 

The  appearance  of  this  last  fragment,  with  the  promise  or 
threatening  of  more,  brought  matters  to  a  crisis.  The  Bruns- 
wick Government,  at  the  instance  of  the  Consistory,  confiscated 
this  fragment,  and  forbade  the  publication  of  more,  as  also  the 
continuation  of  the  Goetze  controversy.  The  Corpus  Evangel- 
icorum,  or  Commission  appointed  to  watch  over  the  interests 
of  Protestantism  in  the  German  Empire,  was  urged  to  obtain 
from  the  Imperial  Council  a  condemnation  of  Lessing's  pro- 
cedure. It  is  impossible  to  excuse  this  prosecution,  save  on 
the  ground  that  the  Church  system  of  Germany  was  then  re- 
garded as  bound  up  with  the  interests  of  the  Empire.  But 
Lessing  here  acted  with  the  same  dexterity  which,  in  the  con- 
cealment of  the  authorship,  he  had  carried  so  far.  He  boast- 
ed to  his  friends  that  he  would  divide  the  Imperial  Council 
against  itself,  and  gain  the  votes  of  the  Catholic  portion  of  it, 
by  representing  the  prosecution  as  an  attempt  to  enforce  an 
extreme  Lutheran  view  of  the  Scriptures  at  the  expense  of  that 
of  Rome.  This,  accordingly,  he  did  in  various  publications, 
maintaining  that  he  upheld  a  view  of  tradition  akin  to  the 
Romish,  which  made  Scripture  less  necessary  than  tradition  to 
the  transmission  of  the  Christian  faith.*  Lessing  here  plead- 
ed the  conduct  of  the  Apostle  Paul  in  dividing  the  Sanhe- 
drim ;  but  the  analogy  will  scarcely  hold,  as  Paul  fully  agreed 
with  the  Pharisees  as  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection, 
whereas  Lessing  differed  from  the  Romanists  on  the  vital 
point,  that  he  did  not  put  Church  authority  in  the  place  of 
Scripture,  but  left  the  supposed  tradition  to  individual  con- 
science. How  far  this  expedient  of  Lessing  might  have  suc- 
ceeded it  is  impossible  to  tell,  as  the  Grand-duke  of  Bruns- 
wick exerted  his  influence  on  the  side  of  forbearance,  and  the 
prosecution  carne  to  an  end. 

Lessing  was  not  unwilling  to  be  delivered  from  a  contro- 
versy which,  partly  from  his  own  false  position,  had  caused  him 
unspeakable  annoyance ;  but  he  could  not  rest  without  making 
a  movement  by  which,  as  he  said,  his  opponents  would  be  taken 
in  flank,  and  would  find  themselves  unable  to  meet  him  with 
his  own  weapons.  This  was  the  publication  of  a  play,  which 
turned  out  to  be  his  last,  and  which  he  had  meditated  for  three 

*  Lessing's  Werke.  Letter  to  his  brother,  July  23,  1778,  and  to  Elise 
Reimarus,  August  9,  1778  (pp.  1008-9).  See  also  his  last  answers  to 
Goetze  (pp.  920-924). 


148       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

years — "  Nathan  the  Wise."  The  scene  is  laid  in  Jerusalem, 
and  the  design  of  the  piece  is  to  teach  the  superiority  of  natu- 
ral piety  and  virtue  to  revealed  religion.  Nathan  is  a  wealthy 
merchant,  who  has  adopted  the  daughter  of  a  Christian  knight, 
Recha,  keeping  also  in  his  house,  as  her  companion,  a  Christian 
girl,  Daja;  and  the  scene  opens  with  the  return  of  Nathan  from 
a  journey,  who  finds  that  his  house  has  been  in  flames,  and  his 
daughter  rescued  by  a  Templar.  This  Templar  had  been  taken 
prisoner  by  Saladiu,  and  pardoned  by  him  from  a  supposed 
resemblance  to  a  brother.  The  attachment  of  Recha  and  the 
Templar  is  the  moving  principle  of  the  plot,  which  exhibits 
Nathan  and  Saladin  in  situations  where  they  display  great 
generosity  and  magnanimity ;  while  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusa- 
lem only  comes  on  the  scene  to  tempt  the  Templar  to  betray 
Saladin,  and  at  length  brings  on  a  crisis  by  demanding  Recha 
from  Nathan,  on  the  ground  of  her  Christian  baptism,  which 
he  had  discovered.  The  lay  brother,  however,  whom  he  sends 
to  Nathan  on  this  errand,  rises  above  the  narrowness  of  prose- 
lytism,  and  also  gives  him  information  as  to  the  parentage  of 
Recha  and  the  Templar.  This  evidence  in  a  closing  scene  is 
produced,  showing  them  to  be  sister  and  brother,  and  the  chil- 
dren of  the  lost  brother  of  Saladin  by  a  Christian  mother — a 
result  which,  if  it  frustrates  the  romance  of  the  piece,  is  meant 
to  rise  into  the  higher  region  of  universal  brotherhood.  It  is 
easy  to  see  that  Lessing  had  here  got  beyond  not  only  the 
reply  of  his  old  antagonists,  but  of  any  others.  A  play  is  no 
argument,  as  he  had  the  making  of  the  characters  in  his  own 
hand ;  and  he  has  not  given  one  on  the  Christian  side  the  com- 
manding position  of  Saladin  or  Nathan  ;  as  the  Templar  and  lay 
brother  do  not  balance  either  of  these,  while  Daja  is  only  an 
amiable  enthusiast  bent  on  propagandism,  and  the  Patriarch  is 
a  monster  of  hypocrisy  and  cruelty.  These  objections,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  liberty  taken  with  Saladin,  who  was  far  from 
being  the  apostle  of  tolerance  which  Lessing  makes  him,  apply 
equally  to  the  celebrated  apologue  of  the  three  rings  in  the 
speech  of  Nathan  to  Saladin,  which  has  been  held  up  as  the 
gem  of  the  piece.  An  Eastern  ruler  had  a  precious  opal  ring, 
which  possessed  the  power,  when  rightly  used,  of  making  the 
wearer  beloved  of  God  and  man.  As  he  wished  it  to  remain 
forever  in  his  house,  he  gave  it  to  the  son  whom  he  loved  best, 
with  the  charge  to  him  thus  to  hand  it  down,  and  with  it  the 
rule  of  the  family.  After  long  generations  it  came  into  the 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          149 

hands  of  a  father  who  loved  his  three  sons  equally  well,  and 
promised  each  of  them  apart  the  coveted  treasure.  As  be  could 
not  keep  his  word  to  all  the  three,  he  had  two  other  rings  made 
so  like  that  he  himself  could  not  distinguish  them,  and,  having 
privately  given  one  to  each  of  his  three  sons,  died.  Each  makes, 
and  stands  to,  his  claim ;  but  the  judge  before  whom  they  ap- 
pear pronounces  them  all  deceived  and  deceivers,  inasmuch  as 
the  rings  had  not  exerted  their  power  of  making  them  love 
each  other.  He,  therefore,  supposes  that  the  original  ring  had 
somehow  been  lost,  and  that  the  father  had  made  three  ficti- 
tious ones  in  its  place.  Probably,  also,  adds  the  judge,  the 
father  had  wished  to  end  a  system  of  preference  undesirable 
among  his  children ;  but  if  they  still  stood  to  their  exclusive 
claims,  let  each  prove  these  by  piety,  self-denial,  and  charity; 
then,  after  thousands  of  years,  a  wiser  man  than  he  would  till 
his  place  and  judge  between  them.  It  is  impossible  not  to  ad- 
mire the  beauty  of  this,  as  of  other  parts  of  Lessing's  poem  ; 
and  though  it  may  owe  less  to  his  invention,  if  it  be  true,  as 
Voltaire  has  asserted,  that  the  fable  of  three  rings  had  long 
been  in  use  in  the  East,  as  applied  to  the  Jewish,  Christian,  and 
Mohammedan  religions,  still  the  skill  with  which  the  moral  is 
brought  out  is  great  and  seductive.*  It  is,  therefore,  the  more 
necessary  to  touch  on  the  fallacy  here  concealed,  as  it  runs 
through  the  whole  play.  If  indifferentism  is  to  be  the  rule, 
then  it  must  be  carried  out  in  regard  to  all  religions,  even  the 
most  debasing,  and  not  limited  to  the  mutual  exclusiveness  of 
three  that  adhere  to  the  unity  of  God.  Further,  this  equality 
of  these  three  religions  cannot  be  admitted ;  and  there  will  be 
in  our  days  immensely  fewer  who  will  concede  this,  at  least  to 
the  Mohammedan.  Again,  is  it  not  the  fact  that  indifferentism 
to  doctrinal  opinions  has  never  been  the  soil  in  which  the  warm- 
est philanthropy  has  flourished,  and  that  those  who  have  been 
the  most  capable  of  practically  extending  their  sympathies  be- 

*  This  is  stated  by  Voltaire  in  his  Letters  on  Rabelais  and  other  authors 
accused  of  speaking  ill  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  reference  to  the 
three  rings  occurs  in  the  letter  on  Swift,  who  is  said  by  Voltaire  to  have 
borrowed  from  this  parable  the  three  coats  of  Peter,  Martin,  and  Jack,  in 
his  "Tale  of  a  Tub."  The  language  of  Voltaire  is  express  as  to  the  an- 
tiquity of  the  parable:  "The  fable  of  the  three  rings  is  very  ancient;  it 
is  of  the  age  of  the  Crusades."  Then,  after  stating  it,  not  quite  like  Les- 
sing,  he  adds,  "The  good  old  man  is  Theism  :  the  three  children,  the  Jew- 
ish, Christian,  and  Mussulman  religions."—  (Euvres,  vol.  xvii.  p.  313. 


150      UNBELIEF  IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

yond  their  own  pale — as,  for  example,  Christian  missionaries — 
have  prized  most  highly  the  deposit  of  their  own  faith  ?  Theo- 
philanthropy,  contrary  to  what  Lessing  teaches,  has  done  little 
for  the  world.  It  has  been  the  earnest  faith,  not  of  mere  bigots 
or  hypocrites,  like  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem,  but  of  zealous 
Christians,  that  has  made  Christianity  fruitful  of  good  works, 
and  given  it,  though  it  is  neither  the  first  nor  the  last  of  Les- 
sing's  three  in  history,  the  hold  of  the  world. 

Our  estimate  of  the  actual  creed  of  Lessing,  now  that  all 
the  materials  are  before  us,  is  very  difficult  to  fix.  I  have  not 
touched  on  the  discovery  alleged  to  have  been  made  by  the 
philosopher  F.  H.  Jacobi,  who,  as  the  result  of  conversations 
held  with  Lessing  at  Wolfenbuttel  and  elsewhere,  in  July,  1780, 
gave  out  that  Lessing  had  confessed  to  him  that  he  was  a  Pan- 
theist. The  evidence  of  this  was  given  after  Lessing's  death, 
which  took  place  in  1781;  but,  as  it  was  discredited  by  Men- 
delssohn and  Lessing's  other  friends,  I  would  not  build  on  it 
with  the  same  confidence  as  if  Lessing  had  confirmed  it  by  any 
independent  published  testimony.*  The  discord  in  Lessing  is 
sufficient  without  adding  this  fresh  element  of  confusion.  On 
the  one  side  is  the  fact  of  publishing  the  Fragments,  and  the 
undoubted  sympathy,  so  far,  with  their  results  as  fatal  to  a  par- 
ticular orthodoxy ;  and  there  is  also  the  avowed  design  of  the 
"  Nathan,"  and  its  author's  utterances  in  regard  to  it.  "  The 
theologians  of  all  revealed  religions  will  inwardly  rail  at  it." 
"Enough,  if  it  be  only  read  with  interest;  and  if,  among  a 
thousand  readers,  only  one  learns  from  it  to  doubt  the  evidence 
and  the  universality  of  his  religion. "f  On  the  other  side  are 
the  strain  of  earnest  protest  against  identification  with  the  Frag- 
mentist,  the  claim  in  many  ways  put  forward  to  be  a  defender 
of  Christianity,  and  the  "  Education  of  the  Human  Race."  "I 
have  never  written,"  says  he,  "  till  the  editing  of  the  Fragments, 
nor  have  I  publicly  maintained,  anything  that  could  expose  me 
to  the  suspicion  of  being  a  secret  enemy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. I  have  written  more  than  one  trifle  in  which  I  have 
not  only  put  the  Christian  religion  in  the  best  light  I  could, 
according  to  its  doctrines  and  teachers,  but  have,  in  particular, 
defended  the  Lutheran  orthodox  religion  against  Catholics,  So- 


*  See  Appendix,  Note  I. 

t  Letters  to  his  brother,  November  7,1778,  and  April  18,1779.     Les- 
sing's Werke,  pp.  1011-1015. 


UNBELIEF  JN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.  151 

cinians,  and  Neologists  (Neulinge).  .  .  .  Shall  I,  then,  now  make 
shipwreck,  through  my  carelessness,  on  the  rock  which  I  have 
escaped  in  the  stormy  period  of  violent  passions,  now  when 
softer  winds  are  blowing  me  towards  the  same  haven  in  which 
I  hope  to  land  as  gladly  as  my  opponent?"*  It  is  impossible 
to  harmonize  these  extremes ;  nor  are  they  met  by  the  explana- 
tion of  Lessing  to  the  younger  Reimarus  on  his  publication  of 
the  first  part  of  the  "Education  of  the  Human  Race,"  in  1777: 
"The  'Education'  is  the  work  of  a  good  friend,  who  willingly 
makes  to  himself  all  kinds  of  hypotheses  and  systems,  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  again  tearing  them  in  pieces.  His  hypothesis 
would  throw  a  long  way  back  the  point  aimed  at  by  my  Un- 
known. But  what  matter?  Let  every  one  say  what  he  thinks 
the  truth,  and  let  the  truth  be  left  with  God."f  As  we  began 
we  must  end  by  saying  that  on  his  religious  side  Lessing  is  a 
problem — perhaps  the  greatest  in  the  history  embraced  in  these 
inquiries ;  and,  among  other  sad  thoughts  suggested  by  the  spec- 
tacle of  so  great  a  genius  divided  against  itself,  the  saddest  is 
that  a  life  so  full  of  struggle — and  on  its  literary  side  of  strug- 
gle not  endured  in  vain — should  have  wanted  the  unity,  the 
brightness,  and  the  peace  which  the  full  acceptance  of  Chris- 
tianity would  have  brought  to  such  a  nature. 

III.  We  come  now  to  our  third  form  of  rationalism,  the 
ethical,  in  connection  with  which  it  is  necessary  only  to  men- 
tion the  name  of  Kant.  This  is  not  the  place  to  give  any 
biography  of  this  great  philosopher,  the  facts  of  whose  life 
are  so  widely  known.  Only  one  or  two  circumstances  may  be 
hinted  at  as  bearing  on  the  prevailingly  ethical  character  of  his 
philosophy  and  religion.  His  Scottish  extraction,  as  the  grand- 
son of  a  settler  on  the  Baltic  coast  in  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  together  with  the  simplicity  and  piety  of  his  father 
and  German  mother,  who  preserved  this  tradition,  will  account 
so  far  for  this  feature.  Further,  his  own  blameless  and  earnest 
life,  all  through  his  early  struggles,  and  till  in  1770  he  obtain- 
ed the  place  of  Professor  of  Logic  and  Metaphysics  in  Konigs- 
berg,  in  his  forty-sixth  year,  along  with  his  destination  for  the 
Church,  must  have  contributed  to  the  same  result.  He  yield- 

*  "  Anti-Goetze,"  No.  7  (Lessing's  Werke,  p.  909.     1778). 
t  Letter  to  J.  A.  H.  Reimarus,  the  son  of  the  Fragmentist,  April  C,  1778 
(Werke,  p.  1008). 


152      UNBELIEF  IN   THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

ed,  indeed,  so  far  to  the  rationalizing  tendencies  of  the  period 
in  respect  of  doctrine;  but  his  high  and  austere  morality  could 
only  spring-  from  an  uncorrupted  life.  Still  further,  we  see 
that  the  rest  of  his  philosophy  all  tends  to  an  ethical  solution 
and  consummation.  His  mind  ripened  fastest  on  the  side  of 
physical  science,  and  he  was  able,  in  his  work  on  "  The  Theory 
of  the  Heavens,"  dedicated  in  1755  to  Frederick  the  Great,  to 
anticipate  the  discovery  of  outlying  planets  like  Uranus  and 
Neptune;  but  this  was  not  the  deepest  tendency  of  his  nature. 
Even  his  immortal  "  Critik  der  reinen  Vernunft,"  published  in 
1781,  could  not  stand  alone,  with  its  annihilating  criticism 
and  rejection  of  all  other  than  regulative  ideas  of  reason ; 
and  hence,  in  his  "  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,"  published  in 
1788,  with  other  ethical  works,  he  had  to  find  in  conscience 
what  he  could  not  find  in  speculative  intelligence — a  contact 
with  the  world  of  absolute  reality,  and  a  hold  for  the  beliefs 
of  God,  Virtue,  and  Immortality.  His  system  was  thus  round- 
ed off  by  ethics;  and  therefore  it  was  to  be  expected  that  if, 
in  religion,  his  views  should  not  rise  above  what  might  require  to 
be  called  rationalism,  it  would  not  be  distinctively  a  critical  ra- 
tionalism, like  that  of  scholars  like  Eichhorn  or  even  Lessing,  but 
would  have,  from  first  to  last,  a  prevailingly  ethical  character. 

Kant  might  have  completed  his  metaphysical  and  ethical 
systems  as  they  stand,  and  yet  have  maintained  silence  as  to 
their  relation  to  Christianity.  But  this  he  would  not  do ;  and 
as  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of  stating  this  relation  in  his  Lect- 
ures under  the  head  of  Philosophy  of  Religion,  so  he  resolved 
to  make  it  known  through  the  Press.  Kence  he  published  the 
work  which  bears  the  title,  "  Religion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen 
der  blossen  Vernunft"  (Religion  within  the  Limits  of  Mere 
Reason).  The  work  consists  of  four  books,  of  which  Kant 
inserted  the  first  in  the  Berlin  Monatschrift  in  1792.  Liberty 
was  denied  by  the  Government  of  the  day  to  proceed  farther 
in  this  way,  and  he  could  only  overcome  the  obstacle  by  obtain- 
ing a  license  from  his  own  University  to  print  the  work  in 
Konigsberg.  This  was  in  1793;  but  immediately  afterwards 
he  was  censured  by  a  Cabinet  order,  and  forbidden  to  lecture 
on  any  subject  bearing  on  religion.  This  was  in  the  days  of 
the  French  Revolution,  when  the  liberty  of  the  Press  was  much 
restricted ;  but  with  the  accession  of  the  new  king,  Frederick 
William  III.,  in  1797,  the  restraint  was  removed,  seven  years  be- 
fore Kant's  death,  which  took  place  in  1804.  These  details  are 


UNBELIEF  IN   GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          153 

not  unimportant,  as  showing  the  contrast  between  the  days  of 
Frederick  the  Great  and  of  his  nephew  and  successor,  Frederick 
William  II.,  when  the  scenes  in  France  produced  everywhere 
a  reaction  in  favor  of  orthodoxy.  But  Kant  suffered  unjustly, 
being  no  revolutionist,  and  his  rationalism,  however  much  to 
be  regretted,  being  couched  in  the  language,  not  of  propagan- 
dism,  but  of  abstruse  philosophy.  What  this  amounts  to  we 
have  now  to  inquire ;  and  happily,  however  obscure  in  some 
parts,  his  book  on  Religion  can  be  understood  by  itself,  with- 
out drawing  much  upon  his  still  more  recondite  treatises.  Let 
it  only  be  premised — and  this  is  the  radical  defect  of  Kant's 
religious  scheme  —  that  religion  is  by  him  subordinated  to 
morality,  as  God  is  only  required  as  an  upholder  of  the  con- 
nection between  the  moral  law  and  happiness,  and  is  not 
directly  revealed  as  a  Law-giver. 

It  is  remarkable  that  Kant  begins  his  work  with  a  recogni- 
tion of  evil  in  man — the  first  book  being  occupied  with  the 
"  Conjunction  of  Good  and  Evil  in  Human  Nature."  He 
preaches  a  much  more  Scriptural  doctrine  of  human  depravity 
than  almost  any  philosopher.  He  wholly  rejects  the  idea  that 
evil  arises  only  from  sense ;  nor  is  he  more  favorable  to  the 
view  that  it  is  mere  privation  or  metaphysical  imperfection. 
His  enlarged  knowledge  of  physical  geography,  as  of  human 
nature — though  he  had  never  been  fifty  miles  from  home — 
makes  him  set  aside  with  quiet  irony  Rousseau's  picture  of  an 
innocent  savage  state ;  nor  does  he,  like  Bahrdt,  Basedow,  and 
all  the  popular  philosophy  school,  look  for  a  millennium  brought 
in  by  the  school-master.  He  sees  in  the  Bible  story  of  the  Fall 
the  image  of  a  wilful  and  perpetual  apostasy  ;  and  he  confirms 
the  doctrine  of  the  third  chapter  of  John  (expressly  alluding 
to  it),  that  virtue  cannot  return  by  a  reform,  but  must  by  a 
revolution.*  This  deeper  view  in  Kant,  as  Julius  Miiller  has 
said,  has  given  great  offence  to  the  defenders  of  human  good- 
ness, as  a  kind  of  apostasy  of  the  philosopher  from  himself.f 
But  there  is  still  in  this  otherwise  striking  chapter  of  philo- 
sophical theology  a  short-coming  from  the  Bible  doctrine.  This 
doctrine  harmonizes  the  absolute  imperative  of  the  moral  law 
with  grace ;  but  Kant  cannot  go  so  far  without,  as  he  thinks, 
surrendering  liberty.  The  one  half  of  the  Apostle's  exhorta- 

*  Kant's  Werke,  Leipzig,  1838.     Rosenkranz's  edition,  vol.  x.  p.  54. 
t  Mullev,  "  Lehre  von  der  Sunde,"vol.  i.  pp.  405-406. 

7* 


154      UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

tion  is  taken — "Work  out  your  own  salvation  with  fear  and 
trembling ;"  the  other  is  left — "  For  it  is  God  that  worketh  in 
you  both  to  will  and  to  do  of  his  good  pleasure." 

In  his  second  book,  which  is  on  "The  Struggle  between  the 
Good  Principle  and  the  Evil,"  Kant  departs  more  and  more 
widely  from  Christian  ground.  Too  much  of  what  he  retains 
is  Christian  phrases  and  allegories,  though  he  also  makes  impor- 
tant concessions  to  historical  Christianity.  The  moral  ideal  of 
excellence,  which  every  man  ought  to  strive  to  recover,  may  be 
called  the  eternal  and  well-beloved  Son  of  God;  and  this  is  the 
most  of  what  Kant  allows  of  the  Incarnation  ;  though  he  does 
not  in  every  sense  deny  such  an  historical  Incarnation  as  the 
Church  teaches.  It  is,  however,  the  morally  good  man  in  us — 
the  man  made  new — that  Kant  chiefly  regards,  and  on  this  new 
man  he  lays  the  burden  of  the  work  assigned,  by  Scripture  lit- 
erally interpreted,  to  Christ.  First,  God,  seeing  the  new  will 
to  obey,  may  take  the  will  for  the  deed,  which  is  a  kind  of  im- 
puted righteousness  or  justification  by  faith;  secondly,  the  sense 
of  begun  goodness  may  give  encouragement  to  persevere,  which 
is  the  presence  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Paraclete ;  and  thirdly, 
the  pains  and  sufferings  of  repentance,  in  passing  from  the  old 
state  to  the  new,  may  make  up  a  death  and  a  satisfaction,  which 
can  be  spoken  of  as  the  Atonement  of  the  Son  of  God,  adequate 
to  wipe  out  sin,  though  Kant  apparently  does  not  see  that  the 
merit  of  the  penitent  is  here  greater  than  that  of  the  innocent.* 
In  these  allegories  Kant  is  weak  as  any  other  man  ;  and  all  that 
his  elaborate  ethical  interpretation  does  is  to  show  that  the  or- 
dinary orthodoxy  meets  real  necessities,  which  philosophy  itself 
recognizes.  Why  there  should  be  not  only  a  right  but  a  duty 
thus  morally  to  allegorize  Scripture  more  than  any  other  book 
Kant  does  not  explain ;  though  he  does  here  unconscious  hom- 
age to  Him  of  whose  life  it  is  the  record,  but  whose  supernat- 
ural birth,  miracles,  and  work  generally,  he,  with  his  generation, 
had  in  the  ordinary  sense  ceased  to  accept.  He  does  not  deny 
the  possibility  of  the  miraculous,  however  hard  to  distinguish 
between  miracle  and  law ;  and  he  draws  a  striking  picture  of 
the  life  of  Christ,  as  exhausting  the  moral  law  and  serving  for 
our  example.f  But  the  wonder  was,  that,  conceding  as  he  did 
moral  perfection  to  the  historical  Christ,  he  should  not  have 
seen  in  him  more  than  an  example — a  solitary  character  which 

*  Kant's  Werke,  vol.  x.  pp.  76-92.  t  Ibid.,  vol.  x.  pp.  93-96. 


UNBELIEF   IN    GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.  155 

furnished  the  material  of  moral  allegories,  and  rather  have  risen 
to  welcome  him  in  distinct  homage  as  a  miraculous  exception 
to  a  sinful  history,  and  the  herald  of  deliverance  to  others.* 

In  his  third  book,  which  is  entitled  "The  Victory  of  the 
Good  Principle  over  the  Evil,"  Kant  brings  forward  as  belong- 
ing to  natural  religion  a  desideratum  which  has  never  existed 
apart  from  revelation.  This  is  the  idea  of  a  Church  or  uni- 
versal moral  society,  in  which  alone  he  holds  that  the  triumph 
of  moral  good  can  be  achieved.  Such  is  the  dependence  of 
human  nature  on  what  is  outward,  that  a  moral  society  or 
kingdom  cannot  be  realized  without  the  acceptance  of  some- 
thing like  a  revelation,  with  an  historical  basis,  and  even  a  di- 
vinely given  book,  as  the  bond  of  union  among  its  members. 
This  is  one  of  the  darkest  parts  of  the  Kantian  system ;  for  it 
is  hard  to  see  why  union,  in  recognizing  the  same  moral  stand- 
ard, should  not  bind  men  together,  instead  of  their  needing 
some  moral  leader,  whose  supposed  history,  or  institutions,  or 
written  words,  add  a  positive  and  non-moral  element  to  the 
constitution.  It  is,  however,  according  to  him,  a  fortunate 
thing  that  such  a  conjunction  of  the  moral  with  the  historical 
and  positive  exists  in  Christianity,  and  can  be  so  thankfully 
accepted,  while  its  documents  all  admit,  even  by  straining,  of  a 
moral  interpretation.!  It  will  be  seen  that  Kant  here  takes 
practically  a  very  different  ground  from  Tindal  and  the  Deists, 
who  not  only  denied  that  the  positive  could  be  revealed,  but 
even  that  it  could  be  submitted  to.  Kant,  however,  so  far 
agrees  with  them  that  the  moral  is  immeasurably  the  higher 
element  of  the  two,  and  sees  the  progress  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  in  a  kind  of  euthanasia  and  ultimate  disappearance  of  his- 
torical religion.  This  process  began  with  Christianity ;  for 

*  Kant  expressly  rejects  the  theory  of  the  Fragmentist  in  regard  to 
Christ's  death  as  a  political  venture ;  as  this  was  inconsistent  with  a  me- 
morial like  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  would  have  been,  as  the  record  of 
failure,  a  morbid  and  self-contradictory  institution. — KANT'S  Werke,  vol.  x. 
p.  95,  note. 

t  "  Happy  case  !  if  such  a  book,  that  has  come  into  human  hands,  with 
its  statutes  as  articles  of  faith,  contains  at  the  same  time,  in  its  complete- 
ness, the  purest  moral  religion,  which  can  then  be  brought  into  the  best 
harmony  with  these  statutes  as  the  vehicles  of  its  introduction  !  On  such 
a  supposition,  both  on  account  of  the  end  it  has  to  serve  and  the  difficulty 
of  tracing  back  to  natural  laws  the  origin  of  such  an  enlightenment  of  man- 
kind as  is  due  to  its  operation,  it  can  maintain  its  credit  as  a  revelation." 
—KANT'S  Werke,  vol.  x.  p.  127. 


156      UNBELIEF   IN  THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Kant  has  an  unjust  idea  of  Judaism  as  being  little  more  than 
a  national  and  political  system,  while  Christianity  first  rose  to 
the  conception  of  a  moral  kingdom  of  God.  Something,  then, 
in  the  same  way  with  Lessing,  though  differing  as  to  Judaism, 
Kant,  as  the  prophet  of  rationalism,  looks  forth  to  the  greater 
age,  of  which  he  seemed  already  to  see  the  dawn,  when  the 
Church  as  triumphant  should  dispense  with  its  own  existence, 
and  the  moral  part  of  religion,  as  the  bond  of  union,  be  all 
in  all.* 

In  his  fourth  and  last  book,  which  is  entitled  "  On  Worship 
and  Superstition  under  the  Sway  of  the  Good  Principle,"  the 
inherent  conflict  in  his  system  between  the  moral  and  histori- 
cal elements  comes  more  strikingly,  and  even  touchingly,  to 
light.  It  is  impossible  not  to  recognize  his  profound  honesty 
and  the  immense  impression  which  the  life  and  character  of 
Christ  had  made  upon  him.  He  refuses  to  decide  the  question 
whether  Christianity  may  or  may  not  be  a  revelation  in  the 
technical  sense,  but  speaks  thus  of  Christ's  moral  teaching, 
taken  as  an  actual  fact  and  as  shining  in  its  own  light:  "Here 
is  now  a  perfect  religion,  which  can  be  set,  in  an  intelligible 
7  and  convincing  manner,  before  all  men  by  their  own  reason, 
and  which,  besides,  has  been  illuminated  by  an  example,  the 
possibility  and  necessity  of  which  as  our  rule,  so  far  as  we  are 
capable  of  following  it,  all  may  see,  without  making  the  truth 
of  these  doctrines  or  the  dignity  and  authority  of  their  teacher 
to  stand  in  need  of  any  other  attestation,  such  as  miracles  or 
scholarship,  which  belongs  not  to  all."f  It  is  truly  wonderful 
that  Kant  should  make  so  little  of  the  historical  side  of  a  re- 
ligion founded  by  such  a  Person,  who,  according  to  his  repeated 
statements,  has  alone,  among  teachers,  exhausted  the  moral  law, 
and  the  narrative  of  whose  life  he  admits  to  produce  in  man- 
kind generally  a  deep  belief  in  its  truth,  and  to  have  an  adapta- 
tion to  the  meanest  capacities.];  For  want  of  the  universality 
and  necessity  which  he  contends  for  as  necessary  to  a  religion 
in  the  highest  sense,  even  a  revelation  from  God  in  the  form  of 
history  is  repelled,  or  reduced  to  the  mere  surrogate  of  a  moral 

*  Kant's  Werke,  vol.  x.  pp.  137-147.  t  Ibid.,  vol.  x.  p.  195. 

|  "How  easily  does  such  a  narrative,  especially  under  the  promise  of  a 
great  interest,  find  universal  admission,  and  how  deeply  rooted  is  the  faith 
in  its  truth, especially  as  that  truth  is  founded  on  a  document  long  accept- 
ed as  authentic,  and  the  faith  in  question  is  adapted  to  the  most  common 
human  capacities!" — KANT'S  Werke,  vol.  x.  p.  219. 


I 


UNBELIEF  IN    GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          157 

religion.  Not  only  does  he  thus  misunderstand  the  astonish- 
ing harmony  in  Christianity  of  the  historical  element  and  the 
ethical,  but  his  appeal  to  Christian  history  to  help  him  to  real- 
ize a  visible  church  becomes  a  nullity;  because,  as  he  himself 
justly  says,  a  kingdom  of  God  needs  God  for  its  builder.  There 
never  was,  or  will  be,  a  church  such  as  Kant  supposes.  By 
weakening  faith  (if  not  excluding  it)  in  operations  of  grace, 
and  in  means  of  grace,  save  only  as  the  habitual  contemplation 
of  all  moral  duties  as  Divine  commandments,  he  takes  away  the 
motive  to  worship.  Private  prayer  he  allows,  but  only  as  medi- 
tation ;  church  attendance,  but  only  for  the  recitation  of  moral 
hymns  or  hearing  of  moral  discourses ;  something  like  Baptism 
and  the  Lord's  Supper,  but  only  as  admission  into  a  Tagend- 
bund,  or  the  anniversary  of  its  founder.*  A  more  stern  inter- 
diction of  direct  communion  with  the  living  God  was  never 
written,  and  that,  too,  in  the  supposed  interests  of  virtue.  Kant 
was  consistent  in  almost  never  going  to  church  ;  but  how  then 
could  he  represent  his  own  moral  society  as  capable  of  cohe- 
sion, nay,  as  indispensable  to  the  fulfilment  of  human  destiny? 
A  sad  experience  has  shown  in  Germany,  as  elsewhere,  that 
•when  Gospel  history,  with  the  preaching  of  the  Incarnation, 
Atonement,  and  kingdom  of  a  living  Christ  through  whom 
God  hears  prayer  arid  dispenses  grace,  is  discarded,  morality 
ceases  to  be  a  principle  of  association,  and  the  rationalist  an- 
ticipates Kant's  Church  triumphant  by  leaving  the  militant  to 
its  own  fortunes.  The  only  value  of  the  rigorous  criticism  to 
which  Kant  subjects  all  Church  ordinances  is  to  discourage  a 
mere  superstitious  and  sentimental  pietism,  and  to  enforce  that 
great  principle  to  which  even  such  exaggeration  does  homage, 
"By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them  !"f  In  the  contrast  of  liv- 
ing Christianity,  as  uniting  in  the  closest  embrace  devotion  and 
virtue  with  this  one-sidedness  of  Kant,  we  have  another  proof 
of  the  Divine  mission  of  Christ;  for  how  should  otherwise  the 


*  Kant's  Werko,  vol.  x.  pp.  235-242. 

t  To  this  text  (M:itt.  vii.  20)  Kant,  almost  in  the  end  of  his  work,  np- 
peals;  though  he  must  have  been  unfortunate  in  his  experience,  if  those 
who  laid  stress  on  historical  religion  in  his  day  could  less  abide  this  moral 
test  than  others.  His  closing  sentence  recalls  the  full  descent  from  the 
days  of  Luther.  "The  right  way  is  not  to  proceed  from  grace  to  virtue, 
but  from  virtue  to  grace  "  (nicht  der  rechte  Weg  sey,  von  der  Be<jnadigung 
zur  Tugend,  sondern  vielmehr  von  der  Tugend  zur  Begiiadigung  fortzu- 
schreiten).—  Werkc,  vol.  x.  pp.  243-244. 


158      UNBELIEF   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

unlettered  Galilean  teacher  have  surpassed  one  of  the  very 
greatest  of  moral  philosophers  ?  how  should  even  his  forerun- 
ner have  connected  repentance  with  faith  in  the  making  of 
atonement  for  sins  ?  Happy,  if  the  stern  preacher  of  the  "  cat- 
egorical imperative"  in  the  German  wilderness  had  enforced 
his  testimony,  like  the  Baptist,  by  a  voice  from  heaven — a  voice 
disclosing  a  deeper  and  more  subduing  mystery  of  love  than 
reason  can  utter !  Happy  if  he  had  repeated,  not  as  a  moral 
allegory,  but  as  a  literal  truth — the  truth  of  all  history — the 
words,  "  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sin  of 
of  the  world  !" 

Thus  are  we  brought  to  the  end  of  the  century,  and  to  the 
development  which  rationalism  found  in  it,  so  long  as  it  stream- 
ed on  with  the  prevailing  tide.  How  a  reaction  began  and 
gradually  increased,  even  in  the  face  of  the  same  spirit  and  of 
its  later  manifestations,  till  the  old  rationalism  could  be  said  to 
have  passed  away,  it  is  hardly  the  place  here  to  consider.  A 
few  indications,  however,  may  close  this  Lecture.  It  was  not 
anything  human,  but  the  return  of  Christianity,  as  a  living 
power  from  God,  that  wrought  deliverance.  Christ  was  recov- 
ered, and  the  Scripture  reasserted,  from  the  starting-point  of  a 
living  experience  in  the  Church,  which  led  back  to  both.  This, 
by  universal  consent,  was  the  place  of  Schleiermacher  in  Ger- 
man Church  history.  The  grave  defects  of  his  doctrinal  sys- 
tem, and  the  failure  of  his  Scripture  criticism,  few  will  now 
ly.  But  the  living  power  of  faith  in  a  personal  Christ,  a 
faith  kindled  by  experience  among  the  Moravians  in  Niesky, 
and  which  all  the  influences  of  Plato  and  Spinoza,  of  Jacobi, 
Fichte,  Soliciting,  and  also  of  the  Schlegels,  might  variously 
j color  or  impair,  but  could  not  destroy,  was  again  felt.  In  com- 
irison  of  this  the  moral  idealism  of  Kant  wanted  the  soul  of 
Worship ;  and  the  gigantic  systems  of  speculative  philosophy 
which  followed,  though  they  recalled  the  grandeur  and  vague- 
ness of  the  Infinite,  could  not  give  a  personal  Saviour  and  Friend. 
Here  was  the  starting-point  of  a  career  full  of  speculation,  but 
rich  also  in  practical  fruit  in  all  directions,  and  which,  alike  in 
the  pulpit  and  in  the  university,  set  out  from  the  discord  of  sin 
to  lead  up  to  the  harmony  of  grace.  The  deepest  wound  was 
thus  given  to  rationalism  by  reviving  the  sense  of  guilt  and 
misery ;  and  a  theology  of  the  heart  took  the  place  of  one  of 
mere  reason  and  criticism.  The  influence  thus  exerted,  more 
especially  through  the  long  university  career  of  Schleiermacher 


UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          159 

in  Halle  and  Berlin  from  1804  to  1834, was  unbounded;  and, 
among  his  disciples,  one  is  to  be  named  as  so  far  dividing  with 
him,  from  an  early  date,  the  place  of  honor  in  recovering  Ger- 
many to  a  believing  theology.  This  was  the  son  of  a  humble 
Gottingen  Jew,  who,  trained  in  Hamburg  in  the  very  Gymna- 
sium in  which  Reimarus  had  so  long  taught,  was  then  baptized 
at  the  age  of  seventeen  by  the  name  Neander,  and  two  years 
afterwards,  by  a  deeper  baptism,  which  made  it  fully  true;  and 
having  been  brought  nearer  to  Christ  by  Plato  and  Plutarch, 
nearer  still  by  the  lectures  of  Schleiermacher  in  Halle,  and  near- 
est of  all  by  the  deep  and  anxious  study  of  the  New  Testament,  .  * 
went  forth  to  make  the  history  of  Christianity  his  theme,  and,  ^(^ 
teaching  it  to  ever-increasing  crowds  in  Heidelberg  and  Berlin 
till  1850,  to  recall  to  the  Church  its  long-departed  heroes,  and 
to  ditfuse  their  spirit  and  his  own  to  the  very  ends  of  the 
earth.  How  great  the  recoil  from  rationalism  in  these  words  of 
the  opening  volume  of  his  Church  History  !  "  We  look  upon 
Christianity,  not  as  a  power  that  has  sprung  up  out  of  the  hid- 
den depths  of  man's  nature,  but  as  one  which  descended  from 
above,  when  heaven  opened  itself  anew  to  man's  long-alienated 
race,  a  power  which  as,  both  in  its  origin  and  its  essence,  it  is 
exalted  above  all  that  human  nature  can  create  out  of  its  own 
resources,  was  designed  to  impart  to  that  nature  a  new  life,  and  i 
to  change  it  in  its  inmost  principles."*  The  impulse  which 
went  forth  from  these  men  erelong  changed  the  character  of 
the  Universities;  and  a  host  of  theologians  arose  —  Nitzscb,  / 
Twesten,  Liicke,  Ullmann,  Tholuck,  Olshausen,  Julius  Miiller,  \ 
Dorner,  and  many  others,  all  marked,  more  or  less,  with  the 
same  impress,  or  yet  more  close  in  adherence  to  views  which 
rationalism  had  set  aside ;  while  a  theology  nearer  still  to  the 
old  Biblical  and  confessional  models,  which  had  never  died  out, 
was  represented,  not  without  many  features  of  independence, 
in  men  Like  Hengstenberg,  Ebrard,  and  Delitsch;  and  even  from  . 
another  side  a  great  scholar  like  Ewald  redressed  the  unfairness 
of  Schleiermacher  to  the  Old  Testament,  and,  with  many  and 
great  drawbacks  of  his  own,  asserted  in  his  own  way  the  his- 
torical greatness  and  necessity  of  the  Bible  revelation.  Through 
the  solid  and  earnest  teaching  of  these  men  and  others  whom 
they  raised  up  around  them,  the  German  Church  passed  not 
only  unharmed  but  benefited  through  the  crisis  connected  with 

*  Neander's  "Church  History,"  vol.  i.  p.  2,  Bohn's  edition. 


160      UNBELIEF  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

the  publication  of  the  "Leben  Jesu"  by  Strauss  in  1835;  and 
the  advantage  thus  gained,  notwithstanding  some  reactions, 
more  especially  those  connected  with  the  so-called  "Tubingen 
School "  and  its  branches,  has  not  been  lost  in  the  Universities 
to  this  day.  The  public  history  of  the  German  people  has 
also,  on  the  whole,  been  favorable  to  this  religious  revival.  The 
outburst  of  modern  literature  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  so 
conducive  to  Christian  results  as  in  England,  for  its  greatest 
names  have  unhappily  stood  more  apart  from  distinctively 
Christian  faith.  But  the  march  of  history  otherwise  has  not 
been  adverse.  The  Liberation  War  of  1813-14  produced  a  re- 
newal not  only  of  patriotic  but  of  religious  feeling,  and  this 
was  deepened  by  the  celebration  of  the  Reformation  Tercente- 
nary in  1817.  The  long  period  of  uneasiness  and  repression, 
which  at  length  culminated  in  the  storms  and  troubles  of  1848, 
yielded  in  the  end  a  great  extension  of  religious  liberty ;  and 
the  Church,  amid  the  confusion  of  that  epoch,  created  the 
Kirchentag  and  the  Inner  Mission,  and  broke  up  much  fallow 
ground  by  Christian  enterprise.  The  subsequent  revolutions 
of  political  history  in  bringing  a  Protestant  power  to  the  front, 
and  in  exhibiting  the  spectacle  of  German  unity — a  unity  which 
needs  to  be  maintained  against  Rome — have  not  only  repaired 
the  losses  of  the  Reformation  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  but 
recalled  the  image  and  the  work  of  Luther  as  the  greatest  mem- 
ory of  the  German  people.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  vic- 
tory of  Bible  Christianity  is  very  incomplete,  and  that  dark 
clouds  are  in  the  religious  future  of  Germany.  There  is  the 
want  of  spiritual  independence  and  self-government  of  the 
Church,  with  the  wide-spread  lethargy  which  it  creates.  There 
is  the  heritage  of  unbelief  and  indifference  sent  down  from  the 
rationalism  of  the  past,  and  which  rests  upon  the  great  cities 
and  whole  classes  of  the  population.  There  is  the  Materialism 
which,  assisted  by  the  failure  and  downfall  of  idealist  systems 
of  philosophy,  perverts  physical  science  in  Germany,  as  else- 
where, into  the  prophet  of  annihilation.  There  is  the  Pessi- 
mism which  even  courts  annihilation  rather  than  Christian  re- 
generation and  activity.  And  there  are  Socialism  and  Nihil- 
ism, begotten  of  heavy  military  burdens  and  poverty,  which 
grasp  with  blind  violence  at  a  transient  Paradise  on  earth,  and 
refuse  to  seek  a  better  at  the  call  of  the  Church,  because  she 
has  been  too  often  on  the  side  of  obstruction  and  despotism. 
Still,  notwithstanding  all  these  grim  and  threatening  shadows, 


UNBELIEF  IN  GERMANY.— RATIONALISM.          161 

the  Gospel  advances ;  and  the  best  authorities  are  agreed  that, 
great  as  the  resistant  mass  is,  the  number  of  living  and  earnest 
Christians  is  larger  than  at  any  former  day.  Who  can  doubt 
that  it  is  so  ?  and  still  more,  if  this  century  be  contrasted  with 
the  last ;  since,  for  one  earnest  and  qualified  defender  of  the 
faith  at  the  date  of  the  Wolfenbiittel  Fragments,  there  are  now 
ten  or  twenty.  May,  then,  this  great  sister  people,  cheered  by 
the  memories  of  the  past,  and  by  the  co-operation  and  sympa- 
thy of  other  countries  and  our  own,  rightly  address  itself  to  a 
task  perhaps  as  high  and  difficult  as  lies  in  the  path  of  any 
Christian  nation  !  Whatever  of  rationalism  may  remain  among 
them,  whatever  may  be  still  originated,  may  they,  in  the  exer- 
cise of  a  wise  and  just  criticism,  be  led  to  eliminate  and  even 
to  turn  to  good  as  brightening  the  records  which  for  a  time 
may  seem  to  be  obscured.  And  for  ourselves,  while  watchful, 
as  we  pray  that  our  brethren  may  be,  against  all  that  is  evil  or 
doubtful,  let  us  still  profit,  as  we  have  done,  by  those  great 
gifts  of  learning,  of  speculation,  and  of  profound  inward  medi- 
tation upon  the  inexhaustible  truth  of  God^ppeated  in  every 
note  from  science  to  sacred  song^by  which,  not  less  than  by 
the  heroic  deeds  of  the  Reformation,  they  have  enriched  our 
common  inheritance;  and  may  the  day  come  when,  in  the 
growing  clearness  of  ^faith  which  has  absorbed  the  mists  and 
clouds  of  reason^their  rationalism  and  our  own  shall  be  looked 
back  upon  as  only  an  episode  of  the  past,  and  as  the  wandering 
of  a  stream  which  has  returned  upon  its  source,  henceforth 
to  be  like  "  Siloa's  brook,  which  flowed  fast  by  the  oracle  of 
God." 


162       UNBELIEF  IN   THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


LECTURE  VI. 

UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY.— STRAUSS, 
RENAN,  MILL. 

Tendencies  of  Nineteenth  Century.—  Deeper  Anti-snpernnturalism. — Nat- 
ural Explanation  of  Christ  and  Christianity. — Strauss:  first  "Leben 
Jesu,"  in  1835. — Mythical  Theory. — Replies.  —  Second  "Leben 
Jesu,"  in  1864. — Relation  to  Buur  and  Tubingen  School. — Criticism 
of  Amended  Theory. — Third  and  Last  Period  of  Strauss. — Atheism. 
— Renan. — French  Unbelief  from  Revolutionary  Period;  "Vie  de 
Jesus,"  and  Succeeding  Works. — View  of  the  Gospels. — Failure  in 
Estimating  Character  and  Life  of  Christ. — Inadequate  Account  of 
Success  of  Christianity  and  Life  of  Apostle  Paul. — Immoral  Attitude 
towards  Doubt  within  the  Church. — John  Stuart  Mill :  Views  of  Nat- 
ural Theology. — Possibility  of  a  Revelation. — Sense  of  the  Worth  of 
Christianity  and  Greatness  of  Christ. — Lessons  from  these  Studies. 
— Fluctuation  of  Unbelief. — Advance  of  Christianity. — Necessity  of 
Maintaining  its  Supernatural  Character. 

OUR  task  in  the  exhibition  of  eighteenth  century  unbelief, 
and  in  the  setting  forth  of  the  contrasts  which  it  presented 
with  the  past,  or  its  own  internal  differences,  is  now,  so  far  as 
could  be  attempted  within  the  required  limits,  accomplished. 
But  it  seems  very  desirable  to  make  the  further  development 
of  history  the  interpreter,  and,  where  needful,  corrector  of  the 
past  century  ;  and,  therefore,  in  this  closing  Lecture,  I  shall  en- 
deavor, more  expressly  than  has  hitherto  been  done,  to  cast  back 
the  light  of  more  recent  times  upon  the  foregoing,  and  to  show 
to  what  extent  the  alleged  results  of  last  century  have  been  ac- 
quiesced in,  or  with  what^ew  phases  of  objection  or  doubt  the 
minds  of  men  have  been  occupiedx 

There  are,  I  think,  in  all,  two  tendencies  in  the  nineteenth 
century  which  mark  unbelief,  as  contrasted  with  the  eighteenth. 
There  \§,  first,  a  tendency  to  give  the  anti-supernatural  a  deep- 
er, a  more  thorough,  and  a  more  radical  character;  and,  second- 
ly, there  is  a  tendency,  in  harmony  with  this  negation,  to  strive 
more  earnestly  to  account  for  Christianity  as  a  phenomenon, 
and,  if  possible,  with  a  favorable  rather  than  an  unfavorable 
estimate  of  its  claims,  provided  only  these  are  denied  a  super- 


STRAUSS— KENAN— MILL.  103 

natural  origin.     In  regard  to  the  first,  it  is  easy  to  see  from  y 
how  many  quarters  it  lias  been  strengthened.     Philosophy  has 
contributed  to  this  development.     So  long  as  philosophy  ended 
in  Theism,  as  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  generally  the  case, 
there  was  practically  room  for  the  Christian  belief  in  the  super- 
natural.    But  in  the  great  Continental  philosophies  of  the  be-   Q\ 
ginning  of  the  century,  in  which  idealism  was  pushed  on   to 
Pantheism,  this  became  impossible;    and  then,  after   1848   in     4 
Germany,  and  even  beyond  it,(materialism \went  on  to  atheism, 
so  that  a  revelation- ceased  to  be  admissible.    <6cience^also  had   (*§\ 
its  share  in  this  denial;  for  though  true  science,  like  true  histo- 
ry, will  accept  any  facts  that  are  such,  the  uniformity  of  nature 
was  appealed  to,  both  in  the  name  of  science  and  of  history, 
to  exclude  everything  transcending  nature,  as  a  revelation  nec- 
essarily does ;  and  hence  the  system  known  as/'Fositivism  could    ^y'  • 
not  but  be  sternly  anti-supernaturalist,  while  Agnosticism  and 
Scepticisn^qually  covered  any  transcendent  region  with  dark- 
ness.    Nothing  then  remained  but  Theism,  generally   though 
not  necessarily  in  alliance  with  a  spiritualistic  philosophy,  to 
form  a  basis  for  Christianity;  and  even  this  inference,  so  far 
as  it  was  a  supernaturalist  one,  might  be  cut  off  by  Rationalism, 
<4*ringing  down  Christianity  to  ordinary  dimension^  and  thus   (jJ^ 
uniting  its  disciples  with  the  pantheist,  the  positivi^  and  athe- 
ist, to  swell  the  chorus  of  assent  to   the   uniformity  of  law. 
Nothing  but  the  renewed  visibility  of^/Christianity  in  connec- 
tion with  greatness  and  progress — a  greatness  and  a  progress      <j 
far  beyond  the  example  of  the  eighteenth  centur^and  such  as  ^ 
made  it  impossible  to  ignore  or  to  despise  it — could  have  re- 
sisted these  combined  tendencies  to  anti-supernaturalism,  which 
would  otherwise  have  thrust  its  dead  body  aside  or  quietly  X^ 
walked  over  it.     Hence,  as  Christianity  was  still  alive  and  ac- 
tive, there  was  a  necessity — and  this  is  the  second  feature  of 
our  century — of^accounting  for  it  on   natural   principles^)  and 
while  yielding  to  its  felt  power  and  influence  for  good,  and 
doing  it  as  much  justice  as  possible  consistently  with  a  natural   / 
origin,  to  make  that  natural  origin  credible.    This  problem  was 
also  in  harmony  with  the  scientific  and  historic  tendency  of  the  J? 
age,  which  would  gain  a  fresh  victory  if  it  could  succeed  in 
showing  that  Christianity  was  one,  and  it  might  be  the  highest, 
of  those  religious  products  which  had  sprung  from  human  nat- 
ure, and  were  due  to  its  mysterious  powers  alone.     This  is  the 
religious  programme  of  the  nineteenth  century  as  contradistin-    ^\ 


164       UNBELIEF  IN  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTUKY. 

guished  from  the  eighteenth — a  work  of  which ^e  see  little 
trace  in  English  Deism,  or  in  French  Illuminism^  and  only 
the  beginnings  in  Eichhorn,  in  Lessing,  and,  in  some  grotesque 
form,  in  Paulus.  Of  this  labor  of  unbelief  the  life  of  Christ 
is  the  central  field,  and  the  origin  of  Christianity  as  connected 
with  it;  and  hence  I  shall  pass  in  review,  as  distinctive  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  as  illustrating  by  contrast  the  foregoing 
period,  the  handling  of  this  problem  by  representative  men  in 
each  of  the  countries  hitherto  reviewed — Strauss,  Renan,  and 
John  Stuart  Mill.  The  new  relations  of  philosophy  and  science 
to  the  problem — the  fundamental  one  of  alleged  Revelation — 
will  come  out  of  themselves. 

Strauss  may  be  taken  as  the  fullest  representative  for  Ger- 
many  of  the  non-believing  attempts,  in  this  century,  to  solve 
the  problem  of  the  life  of  Christ  and  the  origin  of  Christian- 
ity. In  the  history  of  Strauss  we  discern  three  periods,  and 
the  attitude  to  Christianity  is,  in  each,  different.  There  is 
that  represented  by  the  first  "  Leben  Jesu,"  in  1835;  there  is 
that  represented  by  the  second  "Leben  Jesu,"  in  1864;  and 
that  represented  by  "Der  alte  und  der  neue  Glaube,"  of  1873. 
In  the  first,  Christianity  is  explained  through  the  philosophy 
of  pantheism ;  in  the  second,  on  the  ground  of  a  naturalistic 
theism ;  and  in  the  third,  it  is  hardly  treated  as  worthy  of  ex- 
planation, but  buried  in  the  wreck  of  a  materialistic  atheism. 
The  criticism  of  Strauss  thus,  in  its  successive  periods,  refutes 
itself,  and  ends  by  pulling  down  the  whole  temple  of  religion 
on  its  head. 

The  first  issue  of  the  "  Leben  Jesu,"  which  bore  the  name, 
afterwards  to  be  so  .well  known,  David  Friedrich  Strauss,  was 
published  in  Tubingen  in  1835,  when  its  author,  then  twenty- 
seven  years  of  age,  was  only  a  repetent  in  the  University.  A 
native  of  Ludvvigsburg,  half-way  between  Heilbronn  and  Stutt- 
gart, he  had  brought  to  the  University  of  Tubingen  a  keen  and 
penetrating  intellect,  and  a  vast  capacity  both  of  learning  and 
of  criticism,  together  with  a  temperament  melancholic  and  even 
poetic,  which,  if  cheered  and  exalted  by  Christian  faith,  and  reg- 
ulated by  sober  judgment,  might  have  made  him  a  great  Chris- 
tian scholar,  or  even  preacher  of  the  Gospel,  for  which  his  emi- 
nent clearness  of  style  and  thorough-going  outspokenness  of 
utterance  might  also  have  furnished  essential  help.  Unhappi- 
ly, the  faith — if  there  had  been  some  earlier  appearances  of  it 
— failed;  the  balance  of  judgment  was  overset;  and  the  clc^r 


STRAUSS-RENAN— MILL.  165 

and  trenchant  style,  bright  with  so  much  knowledge  and  criti- 
cal vigor,  became  only  the  vehicle  of  extreme  theory  and  de- 
structive paradox.  Schleiermacher  and  Hegel  had  but  lately 
disappeared  ;  but  Strauss  had  chosen  the  philosophy  of  thought 
rather  than  the  theology  of  feeling,  and  had  warmly  attached 
himself  to  that  great  system  of  would-be  omniscience  which, 
with  all  its  efforts  and  promises,  and  its  undoubted  impulse  to 
historical  research,  never  could  reconcile  itself  to  history.  It 
would  be  wrong,  however,  to  charge  Hegel  with  the  excesses  of 
Strauss,  as  the  latter  belonged  to  the  so-called  left  school  of 
that  variously-interpreted  philosophy,  and  as  Hegel,  whatever 
the  tendency  of  his  system  to  pantheism,  undoubtedly  protest- 
ed against  rationalism,  and  declared  that  philosophy  and  su- 
pernaturalism  agreed  in  substance,  and  were  only-  different  in 
form.*  In  truth,  there  was  nothing  in  the  mythical  theory,  as 
Strauss  started  it,  specially  akin  to  the  Hegelian  philosophy ; 
and  it  was  only  the  use  to  which  the  philosophy  was  put  to 
repair  the  ravages  of  criticism  that  established  any  close  con- 
nection. The  introduction  prefixed  by  Strauss  to  his  earliest 
work  shows  how  much  more  his  view  was  a  development  of 
the  preceding  rationalism,  and  how  possible  it  was  for  it  to 
have  come  long  before,  as  it  lay  in  the  germ  in  Eichhorn,  Ga- 
bler,  and  others.  In  fact,  it  did  not  differ  so  much  from  Pau- 
lus,  as  Strauss  was  eager  to  show.  Paulus,  by  his  naturalistic 
explanations,  reduced  the  sacred  history  to  ordinary  facts ;  and 
Strauss,  by  his  mythical  theory,  showed  how  ordinary  facts  had 
been  exalted  into  a  miraculous  history.  The  peculiarity  of  his 
scheme  lay  in  applying  the  principles  of  mythology  to  account 
for  the  creation  of  the  Gospel  narratives.  There  were  the  two 
elements  which  he  allowed — the  Mythus  proper,  where  history 
is  created  purely  from  an  idea,  or,  if  there  be  a  basis  of  fact,  is, 
by  the  idea,  glorified ;  and  there  was  the  Sage,  or  legend,  where, 
with  less  influence  of  the  idea,  the  truth  is  fantastically  dis- 

*  Hegel,  "Geschichte  der  Philosophic:"  "Rationalism  is  opposed  to 
philosophy,  both  as  to  matter  and  form  ;  it  has  made  matter — it  has  made 
heaven — empty,  reduced  all  to  finite  relations ;  and  as  to  form,  it  is  op- 
posed to  philosophy,  for  its  form  is  reasoning,  unfree  reasoning,  not  con- 
ception (Begreifen).  Supernaturalism  is  in  religion  opposed  to  Rational- 
ism, but  it  is  allied  to  philosophy  in  respect  of  the  true  matter,  but  in  form 
is  different;  for  it  is  become  quite  spiritless,  wooden,  and  takes  outward 
authority  for  its  justification.  The  Scholastics  were  not  Supernaturalists 
of  this  type;  they  knew  the  dogma  of  the  Church  in  the  way  of  thought 
and  of  conception." — HEGEL'S  Wer/ce,  vol.  xiii.  pp.  9G-97. 


!' 


16G       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

torted  or  colored.  Out  of  these  elements  of  historical  deviation, 
each  of  which,  however,  is  perfectly  honest  in  giving  itself  out 
as  truth  (and  Strauss  even  adds  a  minor  contribution  of  con- 
scious interpolation  on  the  part  of  the  Evangelists,  which,  how- 
ever, is  not  mendacious),  he  undertakes  to  build  up  the  exist- 
ing Gospels,  starting  from  the  limited  amount  of  literal  history 
which  they  contain,  or  (what  is  the  same  thing)  to  reduce  the 
cloud-capped  fabric  to  its  true  dimensions.*  His  rules  are 
chiefly  two :  to  eliminate  all  that  is  miraculous  or  akin  to  mir- 
acle, since  he  takes  for  granted  that  miracle  is  impossible ;  and 
to  set  aside  all  that  is  discordantly  related  by  the  Evangelists — 
a  task  which  is  all  the  easier  that  he  denies  the  authority  of  the 
Synoptists,  whom  he  puts  down  into  the  second  century,  and 
rejects  the  Johannine  origin  of  the  fourth  Gospel.  Hence  his 
work  is  not  so  much  a  "  Life  of  Jesus  "  as  a  criticism  of  the 
Gospel  narratives,  which  he  goes  through  from  beginning  to  end, 
examining  first,  under  every  head,  the  naturalistic  commentary 
of  Paulus,  of  which  the  explanations  are  summarily  set  aside ; 
and,  secondly,  the  supernaturalist  commentary  on  the  Gospels 
by  Olshausen,  which  had  begun  to  appear  in  1830,  and  in  regard 
to  which  work,  the  defence  of  miracles,  and  the  solution  of  dis- 
cords undertaken  in  it,  are  pronounced  equally  unsatisfactory. 
The  result  is  that  there  remains  either  no  basis  of  truth  or 
only  a  modicum  of  it,  and  the  procedure  of  the  Evangelists  in 
honestly  writing  such  an  unhistorical  narrative  has  to  be  ac- 
counted for.  This  is  done  by  bringing  in  the  idea  of  the  Old 
Testament  Messiah,  which  for  many  centuries  had  been  current, 
and  which  rilled  their  minds  and  hearts.  Since  this  represent- 
ed him  not  only  as  the  prophet  like  Moses,  as  the  son  of  David, 
and  as  the  successor  of  the  prophets  in  sufferings,  but  also  as 
the  worker  of  signs  and  wonders,  here  was  the  model  after 
which  they  unconsciously  depicted  him,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  his  actual  greatness  (which  Strauss,  within  limits,  admits) 
was  sufficient  to  explain,  and  in  some  sense  to  necessitate,  the 
exaggeration.  Such  is  the  "  Leben  Jesu,"  as  it  first  appeared  ; 
and  now,  when  Strauss  has  wrecked  the  whole  Christian  edifice, 
has  preserved  neither  virgin  birth  nor  baptism,  nor  transfigura- 
ion,  nor  miracle,  nor  prophecy  of  any  kind,  not  even  of  death 
and  rising,  and  has  left  Jesus  a  great  moralist  and  reformer, 

*  The  rules  and  canons  of  this  procedure  are  stated  in  the  Introduction 
to  the  first  "Leben  Jesu, "pp.  113-124,  third  edition. 


STHAUSS—  KENAN—  MILL.  107 

lying  in  the  grave  without  hope  of  coming  in  the  clouds  of 
heaven,  he  consoles  himself  and  his  hearers  by  falling  back  on 
the  Hegelian  philosophy,  and  interpreting  it  so  as  to  see  at  the 
bottom  of  this  life  of  Jesus  the  idea  of  the  identity  of  God  and 
man,  and  of  the  mission  of  humanity,  not  in  any  individual,  but 
in  the  species,  to  be  the  Messiah,  to  work  miracles,  to  die,  rise, 
and  ascend  to  heaven  ;  while  the  unparalleled  greatness  of  Jesus 
as  an  individual  lies  in  his  having  seen  and  taught  all  this,  and 
having,  in  his  all  but  perfect  life,  stood  alone  and  unapproached 
in  history  ("  der  einzig  und  unerreicht  in  der  Weltgeschichte 


This  work  of  Strauss  produced  unbounded  sensation  in  Ger- 
many —  not  without  alarm  ;  although,  to  use  a  fine  figure  of 
Lessing,  instead  of  the  Temple  being  in  flames,  it  was  only  the 
play  of  an  aurora  borealis.  The  ablest  theologians  in  Germany 
hastened  to  answer  —  Neander,  Ullmann,  Julius  Miiller,  Tholuck, 
and  many  more;  and  for  two  or  three  years  this  controversy 
absorbed  all  others.  It  was  shown  that,  discounting  the  preju- 
dice against  miracles  and  the  abuse  of  divergencies  in  the  Gos- 
pels, the  objections  were  reduced  to  small  dimensions  ;  also, 
that  the  dates  of  the  Gospels  could  not  be  brought  so  low  as 
to  permit  the  growth  of  myth,  which,  in  an  historical  age,  was 
still  more  anomalous  ;  and  not  least,  that  enough  of  greatness 
was  not  left,  in  the  residual  Christ  of  the  Straussian  scheme,  to 
Lave  given  such  an  impulse  to  myth-creation.  Strauss  defend- 
ed himself  with  great  alertness  and  vigor  in  a  series  of  Streit- 
schriften  ;  and  it  was  so  far  to  his  credit  that,  in  his  second 
edition,  in  1836,  overcome  by  the  arguments  of  Neander  in 
favor  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  he  left  its  Johannine  authorship 
neutral;  though,  in  the  third  edition  in  1838,  he  returned  to 
his  scepticism.  Erelong  he  failed  in  an  attempt  to  obtain  in 
the  University  of  Zurich  a  theological  professorship,  being  re- 
sisted by  the  voice  of  the  people  ;  and  having  published  a 
"Dogmatik,"  in  which,  by  the  Hegelian  method,  he  brought 
out  of  the  cardinal  doctrines  of  the  Gospel  nothing  more  than 
the  barren  results  of  philosophy,  he  quitted  for  twenty  years 
the  field  of  theology  proper,  and  gave  himself  up  to  study  and 
writing  in  connection  with  the  German  literature  of  the  Refor- 
mation period,  of  which  one  fruit  appeared  in  a  work  on  Ul- 
rich  von  Hutten.  In  1862  he  surprised  the  world  by  a  work,  in 

*  "Leben  Jesn,"vol.  ii.  p.  779. 


168       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

which  he  appeared  as  the  expositor  and  apologist  of  Reimarus, 
though  disclaiming  his  theory  of  fraud  and  holding  by  that  of 
enthusiasm;  and  in  1864,  after  Renan  had  attracted  such  wide 
notice  in  the  foregoing  year  by  his  "  Vie  de  Jesus,"  Strauss 
came  out  with  a  popular  work,  which  he  had  for  some  time 
before  been  laboriously  preparing,  and  which  was  a  complete 
recast  of  his  old  treatise,  with  the  title,  "  The  Life  of  Jesus 
Remodelled  for  the  German  People."*  This  work  is  extremely 
instructive ;  but  our  remarks  on  it  need  not  be  lengthened. 

In  returning  to  the  field  of  criticism,  Strauss  had  to  adjust 
his  relations  to  the  many  laborers  who  had  gone  forward  in  his 
absence,  and  chiefly  to  the  Tubingen  school,  which  was  com- 
monly supposed  to  have  been  originated  by  his  effort.  Dr. 
Baur  had  disclaimed,  as  he  uniformly  did,  this  relation  of  de- 
pendence; and  Strauss,  while  admitting  the  great  value  and 
originality  of  Baur's  subsequent  researches,  rather  complains 
that  his  own  part  had  been  underrated. f  However,  he  ad- 
dresses himself  to  repair  the  omission  which  Baur  had  charged 
upon  his  earlier  work  in  its  successive  editions,  viz.,  that  he  had 
criticised  the  Gospel  history,  but  neglected  to  give  a  critical  ac- 
count of  the  Gospels. J  Accordingly,  about  a  hundred  pages  in 
his  work  are  devoted  to  this  subject ;  and  in  these  the  views  of 
Baur  and  his  successors  are  substantially  adopted.  Baur,  as  is 
well  known,  did  not  construct  his  scheme  of  the  origin  of  the 
Gospels  upon  a  mythical  principle,  but  upon  what  has  been 
called  one  of  tendency  (Tendenz).  To  him,  the  key  to  the 
apostolic  and  post-apostolic  age  is  the  conflict  between  two 
parties  in  the  early  Church,  the  Petrine  or  Jewish,  and  the 
Pauline  or  Gentile.  He  has  here  a  vera  causa,  or  element  of 
undoubted  fact,  which  Strauss  cannot  be  said  to  have  had  in 
his  mythical  impulse  ;  but  Baur  has  enormously  exaggerated 
both  it  and  its  influence ;  and  as  this  appears  elsewhere,  so 
here ;  for,  according  to  him,  whatever  oral  arid  earlier  written 
Gospels  may  have  existed,  the  Gospels  in  their  present  shape 
were  not  produced  till  the  conflict  between  the  two  great  par- 
ties  was  cooled  down,  and  we  have,  even  after  their  origin,  the 
marks  of  still  further  retouching  and  adjustment  from  time  to 
time,  under  the  influence  of  one  or  other  of  these  tendencies. 

*  The  German  title  is  "Das  Leben  Jesu  fur  das  deuLsche  Volk  bear- 
beitet."     Leipzig:   Brockhaus,  1864. 
t  Second  "  Leben  Jesu,"  p.  97. 
t  Ibid.,  p.  98.     See  also  Appendix,  Note  K. 


STRAUSS— KENAN— MILL.  169 

It  is  not  necessary  to  state  further  Baur's  general  position,  . 
which  throws  all  the  Gospels  and  the  Acts  into  the  second 
century.  Strauss  not  only  accepts  this  view,  but  carries  it  as 
far  as  Schwegler  had  done,  whom  he  thus  quotes :  "  At  every 
step,"  says  Schwegler,  strikingly,  "  that  theological  conscious- 
ness took  in  advance  there  was  a  fresh  correction  of  the  Gos- 
pels: what  was  antiquated  and  objectionable  was  expunged ;  v) 
what  was  suitable  to  the  age  was  introduced  ;  withal,  many  a  / 
watchword  of  progress  was  interpolated ;  and  thus  we  see  the 
Church  engaged  in  a  constant  production  of  Gospel  discourses 
and  sayings,  till  this  Gospel  reform  reached  a  period  with  the 
exclusive  recognition  of  our  Synoptists  and  the  fixation  of  the 
Catholic  Church."*  However,  Strauss,  in  his  anxiety  to  find 
time  for  his  mythical  development,  both  in  its  first  and  second 
form,  has  sinned  against  history.  The  late  date  of  the  Gospels 
is  more  and  more  abandoned,  even  by  adherents  of  the  Tiibin- 
gen  school ;  and  it  cannot  be  understood  how,  if  documents 
were  publicly  recognized  and  used,  they  could  ever  have  been 
thus  changed,  any  more  than  the  prayer-books  or  hymn-books 
of  a  modern  church;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  how,  if  they  were 
only  private,  they  could  ever,  all  at  once,  have  burst  upon  us  in 
full  public  use  and  recognition.  Another  fatal  result  of  this 
more  detailed  theory  of  the  Gospels  is  the  exclusion  of  the 
mythical  principle.  There  is  no  longer  unconsciousness,  to 
the  extent  at  first  claimed.  If  Luke  could  leave  out  the  bene- 
diction of  Peter  as  the  Rock  in  order  not  to  offend  the  Gen- 
tiles, and  if  Mark  could  allow  the  Gentiles  as  dogs  to  be  fed, 
but  only  after  the  Jews,  so  as  to  please  both,  we  have  a  mortal 
stab  given  not  only  to  the  ordinary  view  of  their  inspiration, 
but  to  the  mythical  theory  of  their  unconsciousness.  We  are 
dragged  down  into  a  region  which  is  nearer  fabrication  than 
colorless  fiction ;  and  if  we  could  believe  this,  the  problem  of 
the  Gospels  would  soon  be  dismissed.! 

In  his  recast  Strauss  endeavors  to  meet  another  long-stand- 
ing objection,  that  he  had  not  separated  the  historical  from 
the  mythical  elements  in  the  life  of  Jesus;  and  hence  one  part 
of  his  work  gives  the  real  history,  the  other  the  adventitious. 
He  complains  much  of  the  darkness  of  this  topic;  and  repre- 

*  Second  "Leben  Jesu,"p.  118. 

t  These  liberties  of  Luke  and  Mark,  according  to  Strauss,  which,  how- 
ever,  are  only  specimens  of  others,  are  stated  in  second  "Leben  Jesu," 
pp.  122,134. 

8 


170       UNBELIEF  IN   THE  NINETEENTH    OENTt'KY. 

sents  Christ  as  so  much  less  known  than  Socrates,  and  so  dis- 
guised by  his  own  followers,  that,  had  he  returned,  by  the  fall 
of  Jerusalem,  he  would  not  have  known  his  own  image.*  He 
thinks  himself,  however,  warranted  to  say  that  Jesus  was  a 
greater  than  Socrates,  a  pre-eminent  moralist  and  reformer, 
who  united  Hebrew  sanctity  with  Greek  geniality,  realized 
with  original  force  the  fatherhood  of  God,  and  founded  human 
virtue  on  this  model,  thus  giving  to  mercy,  tenderness,  and  self- 
sacrifice  their  long-neglected  place  and  ascendency.  Strauss 
does  not  allow  that  there  was  any  defect  in  Christ's  moral 
teaching  (in  regard  to  which  he  accepts  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  and  some  of  the  parables),  so  far  as  the  individual  is 
concerned  ;f  but  sees  a  deficiency  in  regard  to  the  state,  and 
in  regard  to  industry  and  art,  and  something  of  too  ascetic  a 
character.  There  has  dropped  away  the  whole  Hegelianism  of 
his  earlier  work ;  and  he  speaks  almost  as  if  himself  a  thei>t  ; 
for  he  judges  the  morality  of  Jesus  as  drawing  its  excellence 
from  being  based  on  the  fatherhood  of  God  ;£  though  he  no 
longer  holds  that  Jesus  stands  alone  amid  the  possibilities  of 
the  f  uturc.§  As  to  the  public  career  of  Jesus,  he  grants  that 
he  believed  the  Jewish  Scriptures  to  predict  the  founder  of  a 
universal  religion  of  spiritual  worship  and  charity,  under  the 
name  of  Messiah;  applied  that  character  to  himself;  formed 
himself  on  such  delineations  of  it  as  brought  out  suffering  and 
sacrifice,  e.  ff.,  the  53d  of  Isaiah;  predicted  his  own  death,  and 
may  have  taught  it  to  be  a  ransom  for  many,  in  harmony  with 
which  he  may"  have  instituted  the  Last  Supper. |  In  the  work 
of  thus  spiritualizing  the  Jewish  ideas  of  a  Messiah,  and  abol- 
ishing the  Jewish  national  religion  and  ceremonial  law,  he  met 
his  end,  little  being  known  of  it  save  that  he  was  betrayed  by 
a  disciple,  crucified  by  the  Roman  power  at  the  instance  of  the 
Jews  (being  at  Jerusalem  for  the  first  time),  and  died,  expect- 

*  Second  "Leben  Jesu,"p.  623. 

t  "Everything  is  fully  developed  that  relates  to  the  love  of  God  and 
our  neighbor,  to  purity  of  heart  and  life  in  the  individual." — Second  "Le- 
benJesu,"p.  626. 

t  Second  "  Leben  Jesu,"  pp.  206-207.  §  Ibid.,  p.  627. 

||  "Deeply  meditating  upon  his  approaching  death,  he  might  at  the 
same  time,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  sacrifice,  regard  his  blood  as  the 
seal  of  a  new  covenant  between  God  and  man,  and  in  order  to  give  the 
society  he  proposed  to  found  a  living  centre,  he  might  have  ordained  this 
giving  out  of  bread  and  wine  as  a  festival  to  be  repeated." — Second 
"Leben  Jesu,'1  p.  282. 


STRAUSS— RENAN— MILL.  171 

ing  through  enthusiasm  to  come  again  with  the  clouds  of 
heaven,  to  set  up  a  kingdom,  and  judge  the  quick  and  dead.* 
The  resurrection,  and  all  the  miracles,  are,  as  before,  rejected  as 
unhistorical. 

Out  of  these  historic  materials,  with  the  added  help  of  Mes- 
sianic prophecy,  Old  Testament  type,  and  current  tradition, 
Strauss,  in  much  the  largest  part  of  his  work,  gives  the  gene- 
sis of  the  mythical  portion  of  the  life  of  Jesus.     It  is  weary 
labor,  but  he'holds  on  to  it,  all  through  the  host  of  myths  that 
gather  around   the  childhood,  ministry,  and  last  scenes.     As 
David,  whom  the  Messiah  was  bound  to  resemble,  was  anointed 
by  Samuel,  so  Jesus  was  baptized  by  John,  though  a  large  part 
of  his  connection  with  the  Baptist  is  mythical.!    As  Moses  fed 
the  people  with  manna,  so  Jesus  had  to  feed  them  in  the  wil- 
derness.;);    As  the  Messiah    was  not   to  be  left,  according  to 
Psalm  xvi.  10,  in   Sheol,  so  Jesus  must  rise  from  the  dead.§ 
These  are  examples  of  nearly  three  hundred  pages  of  mythical  > 
construction,  till  the  mind   is   overpowered  with  wonder,  and  / 
led  to  ask,  What  great  reality  created  all  this?     Is  the  Jesus  of    ; 
Strauss  so  stupendous  a  personality  as  to  have  cast  so  much    / 
vaster  a  radiance  far  and  wide  than  Socrates?     Was  the  cli-  ( 
mate  so  intensely  hot,  and  the  soil  so  rich,  as  to  have  forced 
on  all  this  tropical  vegetation,  where  the  graft  or  the  parasite 
is  so  much  more  than  the  tree? 

"Nee  longum  tempus  et  ingens 
Exiit  ad  coelum  ramis  felicibus  arbos 
Miraturque  novas  frondes  et  non  sua  poma."l| 

To  these  questions,  on  the  doctrine  of  the  uniformity  of  nature, 
there  can  be  no  reply.  The  believers  in  Jesus,  who  believed  so 
excessively  beyond  facts,  do  not  belong  to  the  ordinary  or  even 
extraordinary  course  of  experience.  If  the  miracles  are  myths, 

*  Strauss  does  not  ascribe  this  delusion  to  Jesus  with  absolute  certain- 
ty; but  is  moved  to  regard  it,  from  the  consent  of  the  Evangelists  and 
other  circumstances,  as  highly  probable;  and  he  says:  "To  see  exalted 
gifrs  of  mind  and  heart  blended  with  a  dash  (dosis)  of  enthusiasm,  is  no 
uncommon  phenomenon  ;  and  of  the  great  men  of  history  it  may  he 
roundly  affirmed,  that  none  of  them  has  been  quite  free  from  enthusiasm." 
(Schwarmerei). — Second  ltLeben  .7esM,"p.  237. 

t  "Second  Leben  Jesu,"pp.  340-347. 

\  Strauss  also  mingles  here,  with  the  imitation  of  Moses,  a  reference  to 
the  Lord's  Supper.— Ibid.,  pp.  496-506. 

§  Ibid.,  pp,  305-306.  |j  Virgil,  Georg.  II.,  pp.  80-82. 


172       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

the  myths  are  miracles ;  and  thus  the  supernatural,  or  subter- 
natural,  returns  upon  us;  and  another  theory,  mythical  or  other, 
will  be  required  to  reduce  this  phenomenon  in  the  Christian 
Church  to  the  sobriety  of  history.  Besides,  why  was  so  unex- 
ampled an  impression  so  transient?  The  greatest  of  moralists 
compels  falsification,  conscious  or  unconscious.  The  followers 
of  Jesns  walk  most  of  all  in  darkness.  The  incredible  element 
of  the  fourth  Gospel — which  Strauss  had  exclaimed  against,  in 
the  case  of  the  worst  of  scholars — is  here  true  also  of  the  best : 
"  The  light  shineth  in  darkness,  and  the  darkness  compre- 
hended it  not."  Nay,  the  stumbling-block  of  Deism  returns 
in  this  very  theory  upon  itself:  "God  has  spoken  ;  why  is  not 
the  world  convinced?" 

There  is,  let  it  be  added,  a  tone  of  sadness  and  disappoint- 
ment in  Strauss's  second  period.  His  work  is  an  appeal  from 
theologians — not  only  orthodox,  but  less  orthodox,  like  Ewald 
and  Schenkel,  to  the  German  people.  It  has,  however,  made 
small  impression.  The  German  people  may  be  still  in  large 
masses  rationalized;  but  they  will  never  accept  a  theory  like 
the  mythical.* 

The  third  and  last  period  of  Strauss  is  marked  by  the  publi- 
cation of  his  "Old  and  New  Faith,"  in  1873.f  This  is  an  en- 
ergetic denial,  first,  that  it  is  possible  now  to  be  Christians ; 
and,  secondly,  that  it  is  possible  to  have  any  religion  whatever. 
Under  the  first  head  very  little  is  said  that  is  new;  but  what 
is  said  only  marks  a  further  degradation  in  the  view  of  Christ. 
He  is  still  allowed  to  be  a  great  teacher;  but  there  is  a  prevail- 
ing tendency  to  abate  his  praise.  The  defects  charged  against 
his  morality  are  multiplied  and  exaggerated ;  the  virtues,  for- 
merly allowed  to  have  been  peculiar,  are  distributed  also  among 
Talmudists,  Stoics,  and  Buddhists.  His  example  is  less  exalted. 
He  may  have  been  surprised  by  his  own  death;  and  his  excla- 
mation on  the  cross  may  have  been  one  of  despair;  at  least,  a 
being  whose  history  is  so  doubtful,  and  whose  exaggerated  view 
of  the  future  so  distorts  the  present,  cannot  properly  be  an  ex- 
ample. J  The  cross  is  an  emblem  of  humanity  in  its  weakness 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  L. 

t  The  title  in  German  is  "  Der  alte  und  der  neue  Glaube;  ein  Be- 
kenntniss  von  David  F.  Strauss." 

|  Ibid.,  pp.  77-78.  Strauss  here  comes  over  to  Celsus  and  Reimarus  ; 
but  he  does  the  orthodox  the  justice  to  admit  that  their  doctrine  of  Christ's 
humiliation  here  saves  His  character. 


STRAUSS— KENAN— MILL.  173 

— "  the  most  one-sided  and  rude  embodiment  of  Christian  world- 
renunciation  and  passivity."*  Strauss  even  lowers  himself  so  far 
as  to  speak  of  the  success  of  a  doctrine  of  the  resurrection,  due 
to  a  groundless  enthusiasm,  as  "  world-historical  humbug  "  (ein 
welt-historischer  Humbug]  \  To  this  Christianity  has  little  to 
reply.  If  so  degrading  a  word  fitly  marks  a  power  of  credulity 
that  has  overcome  in  the  past  centuries  such  a  strength  of  crit- 
ical reason  as  Strauss  is  an  example  of,  mayna  est  veritas  is 
hardly  a  motto  for  the  future,  and  the  stone  is  not  only  on  the 
grave  of  Christ,  but  of  humanity. 

Under  the  second  head,  he  passes  in  review  the  arguments  ^ 
for  the  Being  of  God  and  for  Immortality,  and  finds  them  in-  A 
sufficient.  Little  is  here  original,  and  not  a  little  is  visibly  weak. 
That  a  personal  God  cannot  be  absolute  is  mere  assertion;  and 
to  appeal  to  the  instinctive  acts  of  the  lower  animals,  as  a  con- 
clusive argument  against  design,  which  is  almost  all  that  he 
does  in  regard  to  the  design  argument,  is  not  worthy  of  an  ad- 
mirer of  Kant.  But  with  all  reason  and  goodness  are  not  ban- 
ished out  of  the  universe,  for  they  are  allowed  to  shine  through 
its  laws;  and  yet  there  can  be  no  God  and  no  religion. J  In 
regard  to  immortality  he  has  always  held  the  same  dreary  lan- 
guage, but  it  is  put  more  rudely.  The  hope  of  it  is  mere  gros- 
sprecherei  (boastfulness).  The  greatest  genius  (even  a  Goethe) 
is  used  up  at  fourscore ;  and  his  desire  of  life  to  come  was 
only  the  weakness  of  age.  Besides,  the  materialism  to  which 
Strauss  at  length  accedes  forbids  it,  and  astronomy  has  cut  off 
any  separate  state,  where  man,  along  with  God  and  angels,  may 
renew  his  existence.§ 

It  is  a  novelty  that  Strauss,  in  this  work,  connects  his  nega- 
tive theology  with  recent  science.  In  a  long  discussion  he  ex- 
plains and  adopts  the  views  of  Lamarck  and  Darwin,  and  their 
German  followers,  and  connects  them  with  parallel  astronomical 
and  geological  theories.  But  whatever  the  bearing  of  these  po- 
sitions on  Christian  Theism  (and  of  that  this  is  not  the  place 
to  speak),  Strauss  seems  evidently  mistaken  in  supposing  them 
necessarily  destructive  of  universal  Theism,  for  that  might  con- 
ceivably work  by  the  path  of  evolution,  as  well  as  of  specific 
creation.  Here,  also,  he  is  betrayed  into  great  rashness,  for  the 
Bathybius  to  which  he  appeals,  as  marking  the  transition  from 

*  "  Der  alte  und  der  neue  Glaube,"  p.  93.  t  Ibid.,  p.  73. 

}  Ibid.,  p.  143.  §  Ibid.,  pp.  129-134. 


174       UNBELIEF   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTUHY. 

the  inorganic  to  the  organic  world,  has  already  disappeared ; 
and  Virchow,  one  of  his  authorities,  has  pronounced  against  the 
ape-descent  theory.* 

In  conclusion,  he  tries  to  provide  a  kind  of  moral  rule  for 

/  humanity  thus  left  without  God  and  without  hope  of  the  fut- 
ure. This  he  finds,  somewhat  like  the  Stoics,  in  living  accord- 
ing to  nature,  which  defines  both  our  duty  to  ojirselves  and  to 
others.  How  little  way,  however,  this  generality  would  lead, 
Strauss  has  shown  by  conceding  the  perpetuity  of  war,  by 
loosening  the  Christian  doctrine  of  divorce,  and  by  needing,  in 
a  conservative  sense,  to  protest  against  socialism  and  wild  de- 
mocracy, which,  founding  on  alleged  conformity  to  nature,  reach 
destructive  results.f  With  the  Christian  light  and  influence 
withdrawn,  humanity  would  soon  receive  a  narrower  accepta- 
tion ;  and  a  philanthropy  which  is  not  even  theophilanthropy 
would  write  small  the  only  half  of  the  Decalogue  which  it  re- 
tained. It  is  a  far  from  unclouded  prospect  that  is  before  the 
human  race ;  for  Strauss  frankly  admits  that,  as  a  consequence 
of  changes  in  the  eternal  and  infinite  All,  this  planet,  with  all 

V  its  works  and  all  its  inhabitants,  even  though  these  should  be 
*"  developed  for  a  time  into  beings  higher  than  human,  must  one 
day  utterly  vanish,  and  leave  no  trace  for  succeeding  memory. 
But  still  he  holds  that  it  will  have  served  its  purpose ;  and  the 
universe,  by  development  on  some  other  side,  be  as  rich  as  ever. 
With  these  views,  and  in  the  practical  ordering  of  our  brief  ex- 
istence, according  to  the  rule  already  given,  he  holds  that  we 
may  console  ourselves  in  the  use  of  poetry  and  music,  of  the 
authors  of  which  he  gives  sketches,  written  expressly  for  this 
work  (Lessing,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Bach,  Handel,  Gliick,  Haydn, 
Mozart,  Beethoven),  and  may  dispense,  however,  in  some  re- 
spects, sorrowfully,  with  the  Christian  consolations  of  Atone- 
ment, Providence,  and  Immortality. 

Such  is  the  mournful  end  of  a  mournful  career,  not  pessi- 
mism avowedly,  for  Strauss  argues  against  Schopenhauer  and 
his  followers,  but  pessimism  striving  to  speak  like  optimism, 
and  yet  sad  at  heart.  We  can  measure  here  the  whole  steep 
that  sinks  down  from  Herbert's  Five  Principles  to  the  negation 
of  them  all,  save  only  the  wreck  of  a  virtue  that  has  ceased  to 
be  worship ;  and  we  learn  (alas!  that  it  should  have  been  in 

*  "Der  alte  und  der  neue  Glaube,"  pp.  174-209. 
t  Ibid.,  pp.  252-271. 


STRAUSS— KENAN— MILL.  175 

a  man  so  gifted !)  that,  with  the  denial  of  Jesus  and  the  Resur- 
rection, God  not  only  remahis  unknown,  but  the  very  altar  that 
preserves  His  name  is  overturned  ! 

In  passing  from  Strauss  to  Renan,  and  in  endeavoring  to 
estimate  the  position  of  the  latter,  it  is  not  necessary  to  go 
into  lengthened  discussion,  as  Renan,  after  Strauss,  is  compar- 
atively easy  to  understand,  and  as  he  does  not  occupy  nearly 
so  considerable  a  place  of  history.  He  is  a  follower  of  Strauss ; 
with  differences,  partly  due  to  nationality  and  partly  to  per- 
sonal character ;  but  neither  will  he,  in  turn,  found  any  school 
or  give  impulsion  of  a  lasting  nature. 

When  we  think  of  Ernest  Renan  as  born  in  1823  in  Brit- 
tany, one  of  the  most  Romish  parts  of  France,  aii(t^js  a  candi- 
date for  the  Catholic  ministry  studying  in  connection  with  the 
Seminary  of  St.  Sulpice,  in  Paris,  for  five  years7X.il!,  a  year  or 
two  before  the  fall  of  the  Orleans  dynasty,  hSestranged  him- 
self from  the  Church  and  gave  himself  up  to  Oriental  lan- 
guages, we  have  something  like  a  repetition  of  the  career  of 
Strauss,  who  was  about  fifteen  years  older.  What  immense 
experiences  had  France  passed  through  since  the  establishment 
of  the  Concordat  in  1802  !  Not  to  mention  the  downfall  of 
Napoleon  and  the  expulsion  of  the  elder  Bourbons,  the  con- 
tinued march  of  science,  and  the  career  of  the  Scoto-Gallican 
school  of  philosophy,  founded  by  Royer-Collard,  and  adorned 
by  Cousin  and  Jouffroy,  there  was  in  the  world  of  religion  the 
revival  of  Catholicism,  with  its  more  ultramontane  type  includ- 
ing the  majority,  and  its  more  liberal  minority  headed  by  men 
like  Lacordaire  and  Dupanloup ;  and  on  the  Protestant  side, 
a  more  evangelical  party,  connected  largely  with  Switzerland, 
and  led  by  the  noble  Alexandre  Vinet,  and  a  more  rationalistic, 
looking  more  to  Germany  and  influenced  from  Strasburg  by 
Reuss,  Colani,  and  others.  In  his  own  church,  Renan,  having 
rejected  its  doctrines,  could  find  no  career ;  and  though  among 
the  rationalized  Protestants  he  might  have  been  at  home,  there 
is  no  evidence  of  his  having  ever  thought  of  such  a  position. 
Some  time  afterwards  a  well-known  Protestant,  Scherer,  threw 
himself  out  of  all  Church  connection  into  literature;  and  this 
was  the  course  of  Ronan,  who,  erelong,  became  distinguished 
by  his  Shemitic  studies,  which  followed  German  models,  and 
in  1856  was  made  a  member  of  the  Institute.  Sent  in  1859 
to  conduct  Phoenician  researches,  his  exploration  of  the  Holy 
Land  became  to  him,  as  he  afterwards  said,  a  fifth  gospel,  and 


176       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTUKY. 

he  .returned  to  write  the  "  Vie  de  Jesus,"  which  was  published 
in  1863,  and  to  follow  it  up  with  the  five  volumes  more,  under 
the  general  title  "  Histoire  des  Origincs  du  Christianisme." 
These  last  volumes  bear  on  the  period  after  the  Resurrection: 
on  St.  Paul ;  on  the  Neronian  persecution  ;  on  the  formation 
of  the  Gospels  by  the  end  of  the  first  century ;  and  on  the 
Church  in  the  first  part  of  the  second.  The  whole  work  is  to 
come  down  to  about  160,  when  Christianity  is  fully  developed 
and  established.  This  treatise  is  for  Rcnan  a  substitute  for 
lectures  in  the  chair  of  Hebrew  in  the  College  of  France,  to 
which  he  was  appointed  after  his  return  from  Palestine  ;  but 
in  entering  upon  which  his  first  utterances  were  so  offensive 
that  he  was  immediately  condemned  to  silence.  Of  this  series 
the  "Vie  de  Jesus"  is  by  much  the  most  rhetorical  and  para- 
doxical ;  the  rest,  though  not  without  the  same  faults,  fall 
more  into  the  track  of  ordinary  Church  history.  The  "  Vie  de 
Jesus,"  which  came  out  in  1863,  made  an  unexampled  sensa- 
tion ;  ran  in  some  twelve  months  to  thirteen  editions,  and  was 
circulated,  it  is  believed,  to  the  number  of  more  than  50,000 
copies.  .It  has  now  subsided  into  less  importance  than  the 
"  Leben  Jesu  "  of  Strauss,  and  of  the  succeeding  volumes  I  am 
f  not  aware  that  one  has  reached  a  second  edition.*  Still,  as 
the  representative  of  a  leading  school  on  the  Continent,  this 
writer  deserves  notice ;  and  I  shall  endeavor  briefly  to  estimate 
his  position,  under  these  heads — his  view  of  the  Gospels  and 
other  New  Testament  writings;  his  estimate  of  the  Saviour's 
character  and  life  ;  his  conception  of  the  success  of  Christianity, 
and  specially  of  the  labors  of  the  Apostle  Paul ;  and  his  idea 
of  the  duty  of  modern  unbelief  in  relation  to  the  Christian 
Church. 

1.  The  view  of  Renan  in  regard  to  the  Gospels  and  New 
Testament  generally  is  greatly  more  conservative  than  that  of 
Strauss,  and  falls  in  with  the  general  tendency  even  of  recent 
negative  critics,  to  carry  up  the  date  of  New  Testament  writ- 
ings. In  the  introductions  to  his  successive  volumes  these 
questions  are  handled,  and  in  his  last  but  one,  which  came  out 
in  1877,  the  origin  of  the  Gospels  is  specially  considered.  There 

*  These  facts  in  regard  to  M.  Renan  are  derived  from  so  many  sources 
that  they  can  hardly  be  enumerated.  Some  of  them  are  from  information 
personally  obtained  in  France  and  elsewhere. 


STRAUSS— REN  AN— MILL.  177 

was  an  Aramaic  Gospel,  which  we  only  very  imperfectly  know, 
drawn  up  among  the  Jerusalem  Christians  that  had  escaped  be- 
yond Jordan,  some  time  about  the  year  75.  Then,  not  long 
after,  follows  Mark  (in  Greek),  by  the  author  to  whom  the 
Church  has  usually  ascribed  it,  the  nephew  and  interpreter  of 
Peter,  whose  apostolic  testimony  is  preserved  in  it.  Then 
comes,  as  a  recast  of  Mark,  the  Gospel  commonly  called  of  Mat- 
thew (to  whom,  however,  for  slight  reasons,  Renan  denies  it), 
adding  to  Mark  the  discourses  and  other  materials,  and  written 
some  time  before  95.  Luke  is  next,  by  one  whom  nothing  for- 
bids us  to  regard  as  the  companion  of  Paul,  and  author  of 
the  Acts,  who  writes  somewhere  about  95.*  In  regard  to  the 
fourth  Gospel,  Renan  has  wavered,  believing  it  to  be  from  the 
school,  if  not  from  the  hand  of  the  Apostle,  and  drawing  from 
it  in  his  first  work  decisive  indications  as  to  fact,  though  dis- 
trusting its  discourses;  then,  in  deference  to  the  severe  re- 
proaches of  Strauss,  in  the  thirteenth  edition  of  his  "  Vie  de 
Jesus,"  formally  valuing  it  less;  but  in  his  "Evangiles"  refus- 
ing to  give  in  to  the  extreme  scepticism  of  Scholten  and  Keirn, 
who  deny  the  Apostle's  residence  in  Asia  Minor,  and  estimating 
it,  though  not  as  highly  as  before,  still  as  preserving  important 
traditions  peculiar  to  itself,  f  These  sources,  which  he  himself 
admits,  cut  away  the  ground  of  Renan's  first  work — his  "  Vie 
de  Jesus."  If  two  companions  of  Peter  and  Paul  wrote  the 
life  of  Jesus — Mark,  a  Jerusalem  Christian,  and  Luke,  who  was 
with  Paul  for  two  years  at  Cassarea,  a  quarter  of  a  century  after 
the  crucifixion — it  can  only  be  the  recoil  from  the  miraculous 
that  refuses  their  testimony.  So  of  the  Acts,  in  regard  to 

*  For  an  Aramaic  Gospel,  with  its  date,  see  "Les  Evangiles,"  p.  97;  for 
Mark,  see  pp.  1 1 3-125  ;  for  the  canonical  Matthew,  pp.  214, 215.  In  regard 
to  this  Gospel,  Renan  indulges  in  his  usual  coloring:  "It  is  the  most  im- 
portant book  of  Christianity,  the  most  important  book  that  ever  was  writ- 
ten," pp.  212,  213.  For  Luke,  see  pp.  251-254. 

t  This  is  Kenan's  last  utterance  on  the  question  ("Les  Evangiles,"  pp. 
428,  429):  "We  now  think  it  more  probable  that  no  part  of  the  Gospel 
which  bears  the  name  of  John  was  written  either  by  him  or  by  any  of  his 
disciples  in  his  lifetime.  But  we  persist  in  believing  that  John  had  a 
manner  of  his  own  of  repeating  to  himself  the  life  of  Jesus — a  manner  very 
different  from  that  of  the  original  narratives  of  Batanea — in  some  respects 
superior— and  where,  in  particular,  the  parts  of  the  life  of  Jesus  that  were 
passed  in  Jerusalem  were  given  with  most  detail."  For  the  rejection  of 
Renan  of  the  scepticism  of  those  who  deny  the  Apostle's  residence  in  Asia 
Minor,  he  falls  back  on  the  testimony  of  Irenaeus,  who  would  otherwise  be 
made  a  liar  (p.  425,  note  2). 

8* 


178       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 

which  Renan  speaks  of  the  last  half,  as  giving  us,  with  the  un- 
contested  Epistles  of  Paul,  the  only  real  history  in  the  whole 
period,*  What,  then,  but/(version  to  the  supernatura£>inakes 
~^t  him  complain  of  the  darkness  of  the  first  half  of  "tne  Acts, 
'  since  a  good  eye-witness  cannot  be  a  bad  collector  of  testi- 
monies? Of  Paul,  Renan  accepts,  with  the  most  extreme 
sceptics,  Romans,  First  and  Second  Corinthians,  and  Galatians ; 
then,  with  confidence,  First  and  Second  Thessalonians  and 
Philippians;  with  hesitation,  Colossians  and  Philemon;  with 
more  hesitation,  Ephesians ;  and  only  denies  to  Paul  the  Pas- 
toral Epistles ;  Hebrews  being  probably  the  work  of  Barnabas, 
and  written  before  the  fall  of  Jerusalem.!  Of  the  Catholic 
Epistles,  he  only  distinctly  sets  aside  one,  Second  Peter;  hold- 
ing that  First,  Second,  and  Third  John  proceed  from  the  dis- 
ciples of  the  Apostle,  and  reflect  his  ideas,  and  conceding  with 
the  Tubingen  school,  though  not  certainly,  the  Apocalypse  to 
John,  as  a  representative  of  extreme  Judaism,  but  also  of  antag- 
onism to  Heathenism,  as  incarnated  in  the  person  of  Nero,  the 
Antichrist,  after  whose  downfall  it  was  written,  in  69. J  With- 
out opposing,  which  is  here  needless,  any  of  these  data  of  Re- 
nan,  it  is  easy  to  see  that,  taken  as  a  whole,  they  give  us  all 
that  is  most  formidable  in  criticism,  strictly  so  called,  as  bear- 
ing against  the  truth  and  divine  substance  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  reduce  the  essential  controversy  to  a  question  not  as 
to  uncertain  age,  but  at  most  uncertain  interpretation.  How 
vast  the  difference  from  the  position  of  Strauss !  "  Sure  traces 
sjsvthat  our  first  three  Gospels  existed  in  their  present  form  meet 
us  for  the  first  time  about  the  middle  of  the  second  century."§ 
2.  We  have  now  to  speak  of  Renan's  estimate  of  the  charac- 
ter and  life  of  Jesus ;  and  this  is  the  point  where,  by  general 

*  "The  last  pages  of  the  Acts  are  the  only  completely  historical  pages 
we  have  on  the  origin  of  Christianity"  ("Apotres,"  Introduction,  p. 
xxvii.).  "  It  is  clear  that  where  the  Acts  and  the  Epistles  are  in  discord, 
the  preference  is  always  to  be  given  to  the  Epistles,  texts  of  an  absolute 
authenticity,  older,  of  complete  sincerity  and  without  legends"  ("Apo- 
tres," Introduction,  p.  xxix.). 

t  For  Hebrews,  see  "  L'Antechrist,"  Introduction,  pp.  xiii.-xvii. 

J  For  First  Peter,  James,  and  Jude,  see  "  L'Antechrist,"  Introduction, 
pp.  vi.-xiii.  For  First,  Second,  and  Third  John,  as  being  from  the  same 
author  with  the  Fourth  Gospel,  see  "L'Eglise  Chretienne,"  pp.  47-62. 
For  the  Apocalypse,  as  probably  Johannine,  and  certainly  of  so  early  a 
date,  see  "  L'Antechrist,"  Introduction,  pp.  xxi.— xlii. 

§  Strauss,  second  "Leb«n  Jesu,"p,  61. 


STRAUSS— KEN  AN— MILL.  179 

consent,  he  has  made  the  greatest  failure.  On  the  one  hand, 
his  praises  of  Jesus  as  an  incomparable  teacher  and  example 
are  pitched  in  a  higher  key  than  those  of  Strauss,  even  in  his 
Hegelian  period ;  but  motives  and  actions  are  ascribed  to  him 
which  Strauss  constantly  holds  him  incapable  of,  and  which 
destroy  all  moral  unity.  **  Jesus  is  the  individual  who  has 
made  his  species  take  the  greatest  step  towards  the  Divine."* 
Yet  he  is  supposed  capable  of  conspiring,  with  Lazarus  and  his 
sisters,  to  work  the  collusive  miracle  of  a  resurrection ;  and 
though  this  needed  to  be  withdrawn,  enough  was  retained  in 
later  editions  to  incriminate  these  friends;  and  Jesus  himself 
having  left  the  charming  scenes  of  Galilee,  where  already  he 
had  tended  to  become  an  excited  millenary  enthusiast,  at 
length  in  Jerusalem  "  loses  the  limpidity  of  his  conscience," 
and  having  committed  himself  to  a  life-and-death  conflict  with 
the  authorities,  in  which  he  would  have  been  compelled  to  meet 
them  with  questionable  miracles  as  his  weapons,  is  only  extri- 
cated from  his  false  position  by  death. f  There  is  here  a  deep 
and  radical  contradiction ;  and  Kenan  sinks  all  the  lower,  by 
supposing  this  to  be  the  divine  plan  of  the  universe,  that  great 
spirits,  by  partaking  the  world's  evil,  help  on  its  redemption. 
"When  we  have  done  as  much  with  our  scruples  as  they  by 
their  lies  (mensonges),  we  shall  have  the  right  to  be  hard  upon 
them."];  This  sad  mixture  passes  over  to  the  disciples,  for  the 
female  friends  of  Jesus  may  have  removed  the  body,  and  yet, 
through  the  enthusiasm  of  love,  have  believed  in  the  resurrec- 
tion. Renan  refers  with  approval  to  the  "  excellent  critical 
observations"  of  Celsus  on  the  hallucination  of  Mary  Magda- 
lene, and  similar  self-deceivers;  and  thus  the  unbelief  of  the 
nineteenth  century  joins  hands  with  that  of  the  second.§ 

*  "Vie  de  Jesus,"  p.  457,  eleventh  edition. 

t  "  Sa  conscience  par  faute  des  hommes,  et  non  par  la  sienne,  avnit 
perdu  quelque  chose  de  sa  limpidite  primordiale  "  ("  Vie  de  Jesus,"  p.  360 ; 
see  also  p.  363).  I  cannot  give  the  terras  in  which,  in  the  first  edition, 
Jesus  was. charged  with  collusion  in  the  professed  raising  of  Lazarus,  as 
the  passage  was  immediately  suppressed. 

%  "Viede  Je'sus,"p.  253. 

§  For  the  complicity  of  Mary  Magdalene  or  other  female  friends  in  the 
removal  of  the  body,  see  "  Apotres,"pp.  42-43.  The  "excellent  critical 
observations  "  of  Celsus  (Grig.  ii.  55)  consist  of  an  appeal  to  the  pious 
frauds  of  Pythagoras,  Orpheus,  and  Hercules,  and  of  questions  like  these: 
*'Can  it  be  credited  that  he  who  did  not  keep  himself  alive,  rose  from 
the  dead,  and  showed  the  marks  of  his  punishment  and  pierced  hands  ? 


180       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

3.  When  we  come  to  the  success  of  Christianity,  and  espe- 
cially in  connection  with  the  labors  of  the  Apostle  Paul,  we 
find,  notwithstanding  interesting  researches  and  elucidations 
in  regard  to  his  external  history,  the  same  darkness  and  chaos 
of  a  moral  and  spiritual  nature.  For  his  conversion  there  is 
needed,  with  inward  remorse,  a  lightning  flash,  or  a  sun-stroke, 
ophthalmia,  and  a  supposed  vision  of  Jesus.*  But  let  all  be 
granted,  and  let  the  Apostle  be  started  in  full  career,  how  was 
he  to  convert  the  world  ?  Renan  calls  special  attention,  in  his 
"  Vie  de  Jesus,"  to  the  millenary  expectations  of  Jesus,  which 
Paul  inherits.  How  were  these  to  be  received  by  men  beyond 
the  Jewish  circle,  who  had  no  faith  in  a  Messiah,  or  divine 
kingdom,  and  who  would  hardly  take  the  word  of  a  wandering 
Jewish  missionary  for  expectations  which  required  the  sacri- 
fice of  every  earthly  hope  ?  Paul,  also,  according  to  Renan,  be- 
lieved that  he  wrought  miracles — for  this  is  attested  by  2  Cor. 
xii.  12;  but  these  had  no  reality,  and  hence  would  have  been 
a  two-edged  weapon  to  play  with.  There  could  hardly  be  a 
converting  power  in  his  eloquence ;  for  Renan  says  that,  with- 
out the  Gospels,  "  the  Epistles  of  Paul  alone  would  never  have 
acquired  a  hundred  converts  for  Jesus."f  The  Gospels  did  not 
then  exist ;  and,  besides,  Paul's  Epistles  were  by  some  at  least 
judged  more  weighty  than  his  spoken  words.  Renan  speaks 
of  Paul  at  Athens  as  an  iconoclastic  Jew,  who  "  took  these  in- 
comparable images  for  idols ;"  but  where  was  the  hammer  to  be 
found  by  which  an  enthusiast  thus  blind  to  ancient  and  mod- 
ern art,  "  an  ugly  little  Jew,"  was  to  shatter  all  in  pieces?  The 
victory  of  Christianity  hangs  in  the  air.  There  is  nothing  di- 
vine, and  nothing  visibly  human,  to  produce  it.  The  answer 
of  Lessing,  in  his  best  mood,  is  here  the  only  rational  one,  that 
the  men  who  thus  prevailed  must  have  had  a  true  resurrection 
behind  them.  The  fall  of  Paganism,  without  it,  is  the  greater 
miracle.  Renan,  though  otherwise  emancipated  from  the  Tu- 
bingen formalism,  here  greatly  aggravates  his  own  difficulties 
by  introducing  a  radical  schism  into  the  growing  church,  and 
tying  up  the  hands  of  Paul,  by  discord  not  only  with  Judaizers, 

Who  said  this?  An  excited  woman,  as  you  say,  or  some  one  else  of  the 
same  tribe  of  magicians,  either  dreaming,  according  to  their  wont,  or  mis- 
led, through  inclination,  as  has  happened  to  myriads,  by  a  disordered  fan- 
cy ;  or,  what  is  more  likely,  wishing  to  impress  others  by  such  prodigies, 
and  by  a  falsehood  of  this  kind  give  a  handle  to  other  strollers. 

*  "Les  Apotres,"  pp.  181-182.  t  "Les  Evangiles,"  p.  100. 


STRAUSS  -REN AN— MILL.  181 

but  with  the  greatest  Jewish  apostles.  There  is  nothing  more 
incredible  in  all  history  than  that  the  churches  in  Asia  Minor, 
which  Paul  had  founded,  should  have  speedily  lost  sight  of  his 
name,  under  the  dominant  influence  of  John;  and  that,  indeed, 
in  the  second  century  he  should  have  been  almost  forgotten, 
for  then  his  resurrection  in  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth,  as  the 
founder  of  Christian  theology,  would  be  a  marvel  sui  generis* 
Renan  is  right  in  censuring  those  extreme  theorists,  abroad  and 
at  home,  who  rank  Paul  as  the  true  founder  of  Christianity ; 
but  how,  with  such  data  as  are  alone  allowed,  not  to  speak  of 
the  sinister  features  which  are  inserted  into  the  moral  portrait, 
the  Apostle  could  play  the  great  and  decisive  part  which  he  was 
called  on  to  do  in  the  victory  of  the  Gospel,  is  inconceivable. 

4.  It  only  remains  to  say  a  word  on   Renan's  attitude   to- 
wards the  Christian  Church  as  a  public  institution.     He  is  far 
indeed  from  wishing  to  play  over  again  the  part  of  Voltaire, 
or,  like  Strauss,  to  wash  his  hands  of  all  Christian  profession 
and  organization.     On  the  contrary,  he  everywhere  proclaims 
religion  to  be  necessary;  and,  while  asking  room  for  such  a 
career  of  anti-dogmatic  criticism  as  his  own,  declares  that,  "  let  ? 
rationalism  wish  as  it  may  to  govern  the  world  without  regard  ) 
to  the  religious  wants  of  the  soul,  the  experience  of  the  French  ) 
Revolution  is  at  hand  to  teach  the  consequences  of  such  an   j 

error."f     He  even  goes  so  far  as  to  exhort  the  French  clergy  J. ^ 

who  may  be  troubled  with  sceptical  doubts  still  to  remain  in  ./ 
the  bosom  of  the  Church,  and  apostrophizes  the  tombs  of  such  7 
clerical  doubters  around  their  village  churches  that  now  con- 
ceal such  "  poetic  reserves  and  angelic  silences. "J  The  true 
Christian  conscience  will  here  dictate  a  very  different  lesson, 
and  will  lament  to  add  another  name  to  the  long  history  of 
"accommodation"  by  which  unbelief  has  been  marked.  The 
more  decisive  spirit  of  Strauss,  in  his  "  Halben  und  Ganzen  " 
("  Half-Men  and  Whole "),  and  in  his  later  career,  must  here 
commend  itself  to  the  unsophisticated  mind  of  every  creed ; 
and  it  is  to  be  hoped,  for  every  interest,  that  it  will  rule  the 
relations  of  the  future. 

When  we  return  to  England,  where  our  review  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  began,  ^e^  find  no  one  who  corresponds,  as  a 
representative  of  the  present  century,  to  Strauss  and 

*  "  St.  Paul,"  p.  565.       t  "  Les  Apotres,"  p.  Ixiv.       J  Ibid.,  p.  xlii. 


182       UNBELIEF   IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 

We  have  no  name,  associated  with  the  side  of  negation,  hold- 
ing so  prominent  a  place,  and  exerting  so  much  of  a  leading 
influence.  We  have  none,  especially,  who  has  taken  up  with 
so  much  earnestness  the  criticism  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  or  who 
has  attempted  to  solve,  on  natural  principles,  the  origin  of 
Christianity.  But,  as  it  is  desirable  to  measure  English  results, 
as  far  as  practicable,  against  those  of  the  Continent,  and  to  esti- 
mate the  light  which  is  thus  cast  upon  the  past,  I  have  selected 
Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  as  the  writer  who  will  be  generally  allow- 
ed to  have  come  nearest  being  a  typical  instance,  and  who,  if 
differing  not  a  little  from  both  Strauss  and  Renan,  yet  so  far 
sums  up  for  England  the  parallel  development  of  thought,  and 
gives  it  deliberate  expression.  This  can  only  be  said  of  Mr. 
Mill's  posthumous  works,  and  especially  of  his  three  essays, 
"Nature,"  "Utility  of  Religion,"  and  "Theism,"  which,  how- 
ever, do  not  quite  agree  among  themselves,  while  the  last  and 
most  important  was  not  prepared  for  publication  like  the  oth- 
ers. However,  as  Mr.  Mill  seems  to  have  regarded  these  essays 
as  fundamentally  consistent ;  and  as  that  on  Theism,  more  dis- 
tinctly than  any  other,  strikes  into  the  line  of  questions  dis- 
cussed by  Strauss  and  Renan,  and  on  which  Mr.  Mill's  readers, 
more  than  on  any  other,  had  long  desired  from  him  some  defi- 
nite utterance,  I  shall  make  no  apology  for  considering  it  with 
the  others,  and  relative  passages  in  Mr.  Mill's  other  publica- 
tions, as  furnishing,  however  imperfectly,  an  English  equivalent 
to  these  Continental  testimonies.  I  shall  notice  Mr.  Mill's  po- 
sition under  these  heads — his  Natural  Religion ;  his  view  of 
the  possibility  of  Revelation  ;  and  his  estimate  of  the  character 
of  Christ,  and  of  the  Origin  and  Worth  of  Christianity.  On 
these  subjects  it  may  be  remarked  that  Mr.  Mill's  relation  to 
Comte  hardly  interferes  with  his  claim  to  be  considered  an 
English  representative — a  rank  more  seriously  interfered  with 
by  the  abatement  of  influence  by  which  Mr.  Mill's  writings  are 
already  beginning  to  be  affected. 

1.  Mr.  Mill's  views  of  Natural  Theology  are  of  so  peculiar  a 
type  that  they  hardly  find  any  example  in  history.  Bayle 
might  be  regarded  as  the  likest ;  but  Mr.  Mill  disclaims  Mani- 
chseanism,  holding  that  the  marks  of  evil  design  are  limited  and 
obscure,  and  that  evil  appears  more  as  a  fetter  and  a  limitation. 
His  essay  on  "  Nature"  strongly  brings  out  the  evil  in  the  form 
of  suffering,  which  Nature,  as  apart  from  man,  inflicts,  and  also 


STRAUSS— KENAN— MILL.  183 

in  man  the  defect  or  worse  in  moral  tendency,  which  man 
himself  has  to  overcome.  This  picture  is  so  dark  that  it 
might  almost  be  regarded  as  an  abandonment  of  any  wreck  of 
Theism.  The  exaggeration  of  evil  in  nature  is  carried  beyond 
the  non-theistic  position  of  Strauss,  who  regards  the  universe 
as  still  somehow  rational  and  good.  Mr.  Mill  even  leaves  out 
of  account,  as  due  to  this  higher  Power,  the  tendencies  in  man 
to  rise  above  the  sensuous  and  non-moral  dispositions  with 
which  alone,  as  from  a  supposed  author,  he  is  credited,  and  to 
work  under  a  system  of  moral  government  such  as  theists  con- 
nect with  a  Creator,  and  regard,  with  all  its  present  defects,  as 
the  reflection  of  his  moral  image.  It  might  seem,  therefore, 
as  if  Mr.  Mill,  in  the  essay  on  "Nature,"  and  in  that  on  the 
"  Utility  of  Religion,"  had  finally  broken  with  Theism  ;  more 
especially  as  in  the  latter  essay  he  gives  up  the  doctrine  of  im- 
mortality as  shadowy  in  its  evidence  and  needless  in  its  influ-  , 
ence,  it  being  "  not  only  possible  but  probable  that  in  a  higher^ 
and  above  all  a  happier  condition  of  human  life,  not  annihila-o 
tion  but  immortality  may  be  the  burdensome  idea;  and  thafr 
human  nature,  though  pleased  with  the  present,  and  by  no, 
means  impatient  to  quit  it,  would  find  comfort  and  not  sad-\ 
ness  in  the  thought  that  it  is  not  chained  through  eternity  to  J 
a  conscious  existence,  which  it  cannot  be  assured  that  it  will  \ 
always  wish  to  preserve."*  It  might,  therefore,  almost  have 
seemed  as  if  Mr.  Mill,  in  these  two  Essays,  regarded  his  last 
word  as  spoken,  and  was  only  anxious  to  provide,  in  what  he 
calls  the  "  Religion  of  Humanity,"  a  substitute  for  a  time-hon- 
ored belief  that  had  turned  out  to  be  neither  true  nor  useful. 
It  is  truly  wonderful  how  such  a  mind  could  ever  have  re- 
garded that  idealized  view  of  the  welfare  of  mankind  as  a 
whole,  which  he  calls  the  Religion  of  Humanity,  as  adequate  to 
take  the  place  and  do  the  work  of  religion.  He  does  not,  in- 
deed, run  into  the  puerilities  and  extravagances  of  Comte  him- 
self, and  of  a  portion  of  his  English  followers,  in  providing  a 
ritual  or  calendar,  and  other  commemorations  of  humanity, 
which  are  henceforth  to  take  the  place  of  divine  worship ;  but 
that  Mr.  Mill  should  have  hoped  to  clothe  a  moral  or  philosoph- 
ical Utilitarianism  —  or  universal  sympathetic  benevolence — • 
with  the  authority  of  a  religion,  as  he  professes  to  be  able  to 
do;  to  give  it  an  equal  sway  over  public  opinion;  above  all, 

*  "  Three  Essays,"  p.  122. 


184       UNBELIEF   IN  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

to  introduce  it  into  education,  where,  unlike  the  idea  of  a  Fa- 
ther in  heaven,  of  heaven  itself,  and  of  a  Saviour  who  has  come 
down  from  heaven,  and  who  loves  and  blesses  children,  the 
conception  of  humanity  in  the  abstract  could  not,  till  late,  be 
grasped,  and  could  never  be  made  to  appeal  by  allegory  or  par- 
able to  the  feelings — is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in 
the  history  of  speculation. 

As  if,  however,  Mr.  Mill  desired  to  relieve  somewhat  the 
helplessness  of  this  scheme,  and  to  borrow  more  largely  from 
religious  hope,  we  find  that  in  his  essay  on  "  Theism,"  written 
ten  or  twelve  years  after  the  foregoing,  and  finished  not  long 
before  his  death,  he  makes  considerable  concessions  in  the  di- 
rection of  ordinary  views.  He  does  not  grant,  indeed,  the  sci- 
entific validity  of  any  Theistic  argument  but  that  from  design, 
but  allows  that  "  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  the 
adaptations  in  nature  afford  a  large  balance  of  probability  in 
A  favor  of  creation  by  intelligence."*  He  considers,  also,  "  that 
;  the  power,  if  not  the  intelligence,  must  be  so  far  superior  to 
that  of  man  as  to  surpass  all  human  estimate."!  The  Attributes 
s>4>f  God  in  any  sense  rising  to  infinity  he  rejects;  but  still  he 
claims  to  hold  as  much  as  Leibnitz,  or  many  believers  in  God, 
who,  if  they  only  knew  their  own  minds,  have  virtually  held 
him  to  be  limited ;  and  he  distinctly  excludes  the  Manicluvan 
idea.  He.  goes  farther,  also,  towards  immortality,  not  allowing 
a  single  natural  argument  in  its  favor,  but  equally  excluding 
every  argument  against  it,  and  especially  that  of  the  material- 
ist from  the  association  of  thought  with  what  is  called  matter. 
There  is  thus  a  larger  residuum  of  Natural  Theology,  and  of 
hope,  if  not  of  knowledge,  in  connection  with  it  in  Mill  than 
in  Strauss,  or,  for  aught  that  appears,  in  Renan  ;  and  it  is  so 
far  satisfactory  to  find  in  England  so  much  of  the  old  recoil 
from  speculative  atheism. 

2.  We  have  now  to  look  at  Mr.  Mill's  views  as  to  the  Possi- 
bility of  Revelation.  This  Mr.  Mill  fully  grants,  as  far  as  the 
existence  of  a  Being  capable  of  making  a  revelation  is  con- 
cerned. He  is  beyond  the  atheist  or  pantheist  error,  which 
rigidly  excludes  it.  He  even  regards  his  position  as  more  fa- 
vorable than  that  of  Butler,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  though  vic- 
torious over  the  Deists,  still  allowed  himself,  according  to  Mr. 

*  "Three  Essays,"  p.  174.  t  Ibid.,  p.  1 76. 


STRAUSS— REN  AN— MILL.  185 

Mill,  to  be  involved  in  the  same  error  with  them  in  holding  an 
all-perfect  Creator  and  Ruler.  Mr.  Mill  looks  on  himself  as  cut- 
ting away  the  whole  of  the  Deistic  difficulties — as  to  a  revela- 
tion being  useless,  or  as  to  it  accomplishing  less  than  it  might 
have  been  expected  to  do.*  The  whole  question  to  him  is  sim- 
ply one  of  evidence,  and  to  this  he  proceeds.  Internal  evidence 
he  regards  as  only  negative ;  that  is,  its  badness  can  exclude  a 
false  revelation,  but  its  goodness  cannot  authenticate  a  true,  and 
for  this  reason,  that  there  is  no  truth  that  the  human  mind  can 
appreciate  but  it  could  also  have  originated. f  But  surely  this,  N 
though  a  common,  is  a  hard  saying ;  for  may  not  the  transcen- 
dent morality  of  Jesus,  taken  in  connection  with  his  outward 
circumstances,  be  an  appreciable  mark  of  the  supernatural  — 
not  to  mention  the  whole  plan  of  the  Bible  as  bearing  on  re- 
demption— in  its  unity,  grandeur  of  style,  and  other  qualities? 
We  are  then  thrown  back  on  external  facts;  and  it  is  some- 
thing to  find  that  Mr.  Mill  regards  these  as  available  evidence 
of^  revelation.  He  also  admits  $fat  a  miracle  may  be  discern- 
ibfei>y  the  human  faculties,  as,  for  example,  an  act  of  creation.J  **\ 
He  then,  however,  proceeds  to  perplex  himself  by  the  difficulty 
of  Hume  as  to  testimony;  and  here  he  also  tries  to  make  the 
point  good,  that  the  Bible  miracles  are  not  of  the  flagrant  char- 
acter  sufficient  to  convince  eye-witnesses,  but  may  be  explicable  )v 
by  natural  law  yet  undiscovered.  But,  first,  with  regard  to  tes- 
timony, Mr.  Mill,  like  Hume  himself,  seems  to  err  in  bringing 
in  testimony,  while  granting  the  validity  of  a  miracle  at  first 
hand.  There  is  nothing  believable  on  sense  which  is  not  be- 
lievable on  testimony;  and  the  discernibleness  of  a  miracle  is 
the  same  in  both  cases,  the  objection  of  some  possible  undis- 
covered law  applying  to  both.  Mr.  Mill  therefore  cuts  away 
his  own  ground  in  appealing  to  recent  science  as  establishing  y- 
the  uniformity  of  law,  for  this  should  have  excluded  the  con-' 
cession  he  makes  as  to  the  discernibleness  of  creation.  And, 
secondly,  with  regard  to  the  Bible  miracles,  as  reported,  being 
obscure  and  not  flagrant,  this  surely  is  untrue ;  for  many  of  them, 
if  the  appearances  actually  happened,  as  Strauss  has  felt,  set  at 
defiance  every  naturalist  explanation.  He  then  inquires  whether 
unbelief  in  God  makes  any  difference  as  to  the  credibility  of 
miracles,  and  holds  (as  we  saw  in  a  former  Lecture)  that  it  does; 

*  "Three  Essays,"  pp.  214-215.  t  Ibid.,  p.  21G. 

t  Ibid.,  pp.  217-218. 


186      UNBELIEF   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

though  here  we  may  remark,  as  is  acutely  urged  by  Mr.  Mozley 
as  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  Hume's  objection  to  testimony, 
at,  if  admitted  at  all,  it  excludes  faith  on  the  part  of  a  Theist 
as  much  as  of  any  other  hearer.  Mr.  Mill,  then,  would  grant 
more  faith  to  a  Theist  in  the  abstract;  but,  considering" that 
the  uniform  course  of  nature  is  God's  will,  he  thus  comes  back 
to  the  same  negative  result  as  from  the  teachings  of  science.* 
But  really  it  is  not  science  that  shuts  the  door,  but  presuppo- 
sition ;  nor  is  it  fair,  in  this  case,  to  complain  of  imperfect  tes- 
timony ;  for,  had  it  been  any  better,  it  does  not  seem  that  it 
could  have  logically  prevailed  against  such  strong  assertion  as 
to  science ;  and,  besides,  better  testimony  could  not  have"  been 
had  than  that  of  the  Apostle  Paul,  not  merely  to  other  miracles, 
but  to  his  own,  as  in  2  Cor.  xii.  12,  a  passage  which  Mr.  Mill 
has  hardly  attended  to  in  denying  that  the  Apostle  directly 
attested  any  miracle  but  that  of  his  own  conversion.!  Still, 
though  Mr.  Mill  does  not  allow  the  Scripture  miracles  to  be 
sufficiently  attested,  and  refuses  even  the  claim  of  the  Saviour, 
on  his  own  testimony,  to  be  supernaturally  sealed  by  his  works, 
he  leaves  this  open  as  something  which,  though  not  proved, 
may  still  be  hoped  for,  especially  when  we  think  of  the  gift, 
"  extremely  precious,"  which  has  come  to  us  through  him;  and 
thus  his  ultimate  scheme  has  not  the  closed-up  and  rigorously 
anti-supernaturalist  aspect  which  we  have  found  in  the  Conti- 
nental theories. 

3.  We  have,  lastly,  to  look  at  Mr.  Mill's  estimate  of  the  ori- 
gin of  Christianity,  of  its  worth,  and  especially  of  the  character 
of  Christ.  This  field  is  much  less  gone  into  than  by  Strauss 
and  Renan ;  but  Mr.  Mill  also  travels  in  it ;  and  though  there 
be  much  that  to  Christian  minds  is  not  only  unsatisfactory 
but  painful,  there  is  also  much  that  is  striking  and  interest- 
ing. As  already  seen,  it  can  only  be  hoped,  not  scientifically 
believed,  that  Jesus  is  a  divine  messenger,  that  the  government 
of  God  is  what  he  proclaims  it  to  be,  and  that  the  immortal- 
ity held  out  in  his  teaching  is  really  a  divine  promise.  So 

*  "Three  Essays,"  pp.  232-234. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  239,  note:  "St.  Paul,  the  only  known  exception  to  the  igno- 
rance and  want  of  education  of  the  first  generation  of  Christians,  attests 
no  miracle  but  that  of  his  own  conversion,  which,  of  all  the  miracles  of  the 
New  Testament,  is  the  one  which  admits  of  the  easiest  explanation  from 
natural  causes." 


STRAUSS— KENAN-MILL.  187 

far  as  strict  reasoning  goes,  we  know  nothing  more  of  the 
origin  of  Christianity  than  that  God  "made  provision  in  the  ^> 
scheme  of  creation  for  its  arising  at  the  appointed  time  by 
natural  development  ;"*  but  it  is  our  wisdom  so  to  culti- 
vate the  faculties  of  hope  and  imagination  in  harmony  with 
exact  evidence  as  to  cherish  the  idea  that  there  may  be  truth 
in  the  supernatural  elements  of  its  history.  Mr.  Mill,  in  de- 
tail, applies  his  general  principle  so  as  to  bring  out  the  worth  ^ 
of  Christianity  as  a  supplement  to  Natural  Religion,  even  as 
there  is  an  element  of  hope  in  Natural  Religion  beyond  knowl- 
edge :  "  The  indulgence  of  hope  with  regard  to  the  govern- 
ment of  the  universe,  and  the  destiny  of  man  after  death,  while 
we  recognize  as  a  clear  truth  that  we  have  no  ground  for  more 
than  hope,  is  legitimate,  and  philosophically  defensible.  The 
beneficial  effect  of  such  a  hope  is  far  from  trifling.  It  makes 
life  and  human  nature  a  far  greater  thing  to  the  feelings,  and 
gives  greater  strength  as  well  as  greater  solemnity  to  all  the 
sentiments  which  are  awakened  in  us  by  our  fellow  -  creat- 
ures and  by  mankind  at  large."f  These  and  similar  senti- 
ments are  a  great  contrast  to  the  almost  relentless  tone  with 
which,  in  some  quarters,  the  hope  of  immortality  is  abandon- 
ed. Another  benefit,  "  infinitely  precious  to  mankind,"  "  con- 
sists of  the  familiarity  of  the  imagination  with  the  conception 
of  a  morally  perfect  Being,  and  the  habit  of  taking  the  appro- 
bation of  such  a  Being  as  the  norma,  or  standard,  to  which 
to  refer,  and  by  which  to  regulate  our  own  characters  and 
lives."J  This,  Mr.  Mill  holds,  may  be  competent  even  to  one 
who  regards  such  a  person  as  imaginary ;  but  "  religion,  since 
the  birth  of  Christianity,  has  inculcated  the  belief  that  our 
highest  conceptions  of  combined  wisdom  and  goodness  exist 
in  the  concrete  in  a  living  Being,  who  has  his  eyes  on  us,  and 
cares  for  our  good."  §  This  benefit  has  been,  and  will  be,  de- 
rived, though  the  disciples  of  Christ  have  overestimated  the 
absolute  perfection  of  the  Governor  of  the  universe ;  and  those 
who  hold  a  mysterious  limit  to  his  power  will  be  left  all  the 
more  to  indulge  the  supposition,  which  there  is  nothing  to 
disprove,  "  that  his  goodness  is  complete,  and  that  the  ideally 
perfect  character  in  whose  likeness  we  should  wish  to  form 
ourselves,  and  to  whose  supposed  approbation  we  refer  our 

*  "  Three  Essays,"  p.  236.  t  Ibid.,  p.  249. 

I  Ibid.,  p.  250.  §  Ibid.,  pp.  250,  251. 


188       UNBELIEF  IN  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

actions,  may  have  a  real  existence  in  a  Being  to  whom  we  owe 
all  such  good  as  we  enjoy."*  Christians  will  be  thankful  to 
Mr.  Mill  for  recognizing  so  far  this  benefit  of  Christianity, 
though  they  will  hold  that  there  is  no  inconsistency,  while 
keeping  fast  to  the  absolute  perfection,  not  of  a  problematical, 
but  of  a  real  God,  in  bringing  in  a  limit  to  account  for  difficul- 
ties, through  one  attribute  of  God  limiting  another,  or  through 
God  limiting  himself  by  a  self-assumed  relation  to  creatures, 
or  through  limitation  in  a  certain  sense  being  connected  with 
evil.  Last  of  all,  Mr.  Mill  finds  the  worth  of  Christianity  in 
the  character  of  Christ,  which,  though,  as  drawn  by  him,  it 
contains  statements  to  which  all  believers  in  Christ's  divine 
dignity  and  highest  mission  must  earnestly  except,  rises  to 
a  much  higher  strain  than  anything  he  has  written  before, 
virtually  wiping  out  his  own  earlier  criticisms  in  his  Essay  on 
"Liberty,"  and  his  Essay  on  "The  Utility  of  Religion,"" and 
even  recalling  the  celebrated  portrait  of  Rousseau.  "Above 
all,  the  most  valuable  part  of  the  effect  on  tfie  character 
which  Christianity  has  produced,  by  holding  up  in  a  divine 
person  a  standard  of  excellence  and  a  model  for  imitation, 
is  available  even  to  the  absolute  unbeliever,  and  can  never 
more  be  lost  to  humanity.  For  it  is  Christ,  rather  than  God, 
whom  Christianity  has  held  up  to  believers  as  the  pattern 
of  perfection  for  humanity.  It  is  the  God  incarnate,  more 
than  the  God  of  the  Jews  or  of  Nature,  who,  being  idealized, 
has  taken  so  great  and  salutary  a  hold  on  the  modern  mind — 
and,  whatever  else  is  taken  away  from  us  by  rational  criti- 
cism, Christ  is  still  left  —  a  unique  figure,  not  more  unlike 
all  his  precursors  than  all  his  followers,  even  those  who  had 
the  direct  benefit  of  his  personal  teaching.  It  is  of  no  use  to 
say  that  Christ,  as  exhibited  in  the  Gospels,  is  not  historical, 
and  that  we  know  not  how  much  of  what  is  admirable  has 
been  superadded  by  the  tradition  of  his  followers.  The  tradi- 
tion of  followers  suffices  to  insert  any  number  of  marvels,  and 
may  have  inserted  all  the  miracles  which  he  is  reputed  to  have 
wrought.  But  who  among  the  disciples  of  Jesus,  or  among 
their  proselytes,  was  capable  of  inventing  the  sayings  ascribed 
to  Jesus  or  of  imagining  the  life  and  character  revealed  in  the 
Gospels?  Certainly  not  the  fishermen  of  Galilee;  as  certainly 


*  "Three  Essays, "pp.  252,  253. 


STRAUSS— RENAN— MILL.  180 

not  St.  Paul,  whose  character  and  idiosyncrasies  were  of  a  to- 
tally different  sort;  still  less  the  early  Christian  writers,  in 
whom  nothing  is  more  evident  than  that  the  good  which  was 
in  them  was  all  derived,  as  they  always  professed  that  it  was 
derived,  from  this  higher  source.  What  could  be  added  and 
interpolated  by  a  disciple  we  may  see  in  the  mystical  parts  of 
the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  matter  imported  from  Philo  and  the 
Alexandrian  Platonists,  and  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Saviour 
in  long  speeches  about  himself,  such  as  the  other  Gospels  con- 
tain not  the  slightest  vestige  of,  though  pretended  to  have  been 
delivered  on  occasions  of  the  deepest  interest,  and  when  his 
principal  followers  were  all  present;  most  prominently  at  the 
Last  Supper.  The  East  was  full  of  men  who  could  have  stolen 
any  quantity  of  this  poor  stuff,  as  the  multitudinous  Oriental 
sects  of  Gnostics  afterwards  did.  But  about  the  life  and  say- 
ings of  Jesus  there  is  a  stamp  of  personal  originality,  combined 
with  profundity  of  insight,  which,  if  we  abandon  the  idle  ex- 
pectation of  finding  scientific  precision  where  something  very 
different  was  aimed  at,  must  place  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth, 
even  in  the  estimation  of  those  who  have  no  belief  in  his  in- 
spiration, in  the  very  first  rank  of  the  men  of  sublime  genius 
of  whom  our  species  can  boast.  When  this  pre-eminent  genius 
is  combined  with  the  qualities  of  probably  the  greatest  moral 
reformer  and  martyr  to  that  mission  who  ever  existed  upon  the 
earth,  religion  cannot  be  said  to  have  made  a  bad  choice  in 
pitching  on  this  man  as  the  ideal  representative  and  guide  of 
humanity ;  nor  even  now  would  it  be  easy,  even  for  an  unbe- 
liever, to  find  a  better  translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue  from 
the  abstract  into  the  concrete,  than  to  endeavor  so  to  live  that 
Christ  would  approve  our  life.  When  to  this  we  add  that,  to 
the  conception  of  the  rational  sceptic,  it  remains  a  possibility 
that  Christ  actually  was  what  he  supposed  himself  to  be — not 
God,  for  he  never  made  the  smallest  pretension  to  that  charac- 
ter, and  would  probably  have  thought  such  a  pretension  as  blas- 
phemous as  it  seemed  to  the  men  who  condemned  him — but  a 
man  charged  with  a  special,  express,  and  unique  commission 
from  God  to  lead  mankind  to  truth  and  virtue,  we  may  well 
conclude  that  the  influences  of  religion  on  the  character  which 
will  remain  after  rational  criticism  has  done  its  utmost  against 
the  evidences  of  religion,  are  well  worth  preserving,  and  that 
what  they  lack  in  direct  strength,  as  compared  with  those  of  a 
firmer  belief,  is  more  than  compensated  by  the  greater  truth 


190       UNBELIEF  IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTL'UV. 

and  rectitude  of  the  morality  they  sanction."*  These  approxi- 
mations of  Mr.  Mill  to  Christianity  are  also  the  more  remark- 
able, that  they  come  from  one  who  had  not,  like  Strauss  and 
Kenan,  any  Christian  training ;  and  while  Mr.  Mill  has  not,  any 
more  than  they,  solved  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  Christianit}% 
his  willingness  to  accept  a  supernatural  theory,  if  it  could  be 
found,  is  also  to  be  noted  as  what,  after  so  long  a  period,  shows 
a  gleam  of  Butler  more  than  a  reflection  of  English  Deism. 

This  lengthened  review  may  now  end  in  one  or  two  reflec- 
tions, which  hardly  require  to  be  more  than  stated. 

1.  The  first  is,  the  changeful  and  fluctuating  character  of 
doubt  and  denial  in  regard  to  Christianity.     To  say  nothing 
of  earlier  periods,  what  a  various  front  has  unbelief  worn  since 
the  days  of  Lord  Herbert !     Almost  nothing  has  been  common 
but  the  rejection  of  the  supernatural.     Deism,  pantheism,  scep- 
ticism, atheism  have  all  appeared  by  turns.     If  there  has  been 
a  progress,  it  has  been  from   negation  to  negation  more  ex- 
treme :  Hobbes  leading  on  to   Hume,  Voltaire  to   Helvctius, 
Semler  to  Strauss.      The  assailants  of  Christianity  have  re- 
versed each  other's  procedure,  making  each  other's  denials  their 
own  premises.    The  most  opposite  views  have  been  taken  as  to 
the  validity  of  metaphysical  principles,  as  to  the  authorship  of 
sacred  books,  as  to  the  meaning  of  Christianity,  and  the  value 
of  its  separate  parts.     The  most  different  moods  of  rejection 
have  been  exhibited,  from  superficial  contempt  to  respectful, 
almost  reverential,  sadness.     A  whole  generation,  a  whole  cen- 
tury, disowns  the  spirit  of  its  precursor,  which,  however,  returns, 
if  not  in  the  mass,  in  solitary  instances.     Hence  the  oblivion 

Mmto  which  so  much  of  this  literature  has  passed.  There  is  no 
Jianding  down  here  of  the  torch^for  each  period  is  strange  to 
the  other,  and  the  last  thing  which  it  will  do  for  it  is  to  reprint 
its  documents.  Writers  of  this  school  have,  as  a  rule,  therefore, 
to  dispense  with  the  immortality,  even  in  time,  which  they  so 
often  renounce  beyond  it.  It  is  not  true  of  them  that  in  losing 
their  life  they  find  it. 

2.  The  second  reflection  is,  that  Christianity  has  advanced  in 
spite  of  all  adverse  argument.     It  was  a  great  saying  of  Origen, 

*  "Three  Essays, "pp.  253-255.     See  also  Appendix,  Notes  M  and  N. 


STRAUSS-REN  AN-M  ILL.  191  l 

in  opening  his  reply  to  Celsus,  that  Paul,  in  speaking  of  separa-     -s 
tion  from  Christ,  did  not  mention  arguments  among  its  causes. 
However  lamentable  in  their  own  case,  and  injurious  to  others, -y 
the  reasonings  of  unbelievers  have  not  hindered,  on  a  large  scale, 
the  progress  of  Christianity.     They  have  often  been  the  means 
of  arousing  zeal  and  of  arresting  declension.    They  have  shamed 
into  repentance,  by  their  exposures,  corruptions  that  needed  such 
rough  surgery ;  and  the  wound  which  has  cleared  the  system 
has'been  turned  into  a  blessing.     Always,  the  Church  has  suf- 
fered more  from  the  inconsistencies  of  its  friends  than  the 
menaces  and  violences  of  its  enemies;  and  the  apologist  has 
been  less  needed  than  the  preacher  of  righteousness.     Chris- 
tianity has  not  been  saved  to  us  in  Britain  mainly  by  the  argu- 
ments of  Butler  and  Sherlock,  but  by  the  slow  yet  sure  revival 
that  began  to  spread  over  the  whole  English-speaking  world ; 
nor  was  Germany  rescued  from  rationalism,  in  so  far  as  it  has    ^S 
been,  merely  by  professors  and  theologians  meeting  negative      ^x 
criticism,  but  by  the  return  of  visible  Christianity,  and  by  the 
calling  forth  of  prayer  which  has  power  with  God.     Here,  as 
everywhere,  faith  has  brought  victory;  and  who  that  contrasts 
the  fortunes  and  prospects  of  Christianity  almost  anywhere,  in\ 
the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  with  what  they  were  \ 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth,  can  deny  that  Christianity  (t*j£* 
has  not  only  survived  but  overcome  ? 

3.  The  third  and  closing  reflection  is,  that  Christianity  is  not 
promoted  by  changing  either  its  type  of  doctrine  or  its  style 
of  evidences.  Wherever  it  has  survived  the  flood  of  scepti- 
cism, and  flourished  anew,  its  progress  Jias  been  in  direct  propor- 
tion to^ts  clear  reassertion  of  its  supernatural  character.^  It  V 
was  eminently  so  in  connection  with  the  Methodist  revival  in 
England,  which  sooner  or  later  stamped  on  the  whole  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  Christianity  the  impress  of  such  doctrines,  centred  in 
the  New  Birth,  as  were  more  faintly  held  before  its  advent ; 
and  in  like  manner,  on  the  Continent,  wherever  Christianity 
has  come  with  greatest  power,  it  has  not  been  in  proportion  as 
it  has  made  a  compromise  with  lingering  elements  of  unbelief, 
but  as  it  has  cast  them  out.  The  very  experience  of  Romanism 
and  Tractarianism  has  been  in  the  same  direction  ;  for  it  has 
been  not  merely  their  hierarchical  or  ritualist  side  that  has 
given  them  strength  against  unbelief,  but  their  meeting  so  far 


192        UNBELIEF   IN   THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY. 

those  wants  of  the  soul  which  are  rooted  in  the  relation  of  man 
to  the  supernatural,  and  which  only  the  supernatural  can  sup- 
ply. It  is  equally  the  dictate  of  loyalty  to  Christianity  and  of 
faith  in  its  destinies  to  hold  fast  to  this  supernatural  point  of 
view  in  the  statement  of  its  evidences.  This  does  not  involve 
the  neglect  of  any  historical  lesson  or  experienced  fitness,  or 
any  one-sided  treatment  of  external  or  internal  arguments.  In 
the  handling  and  proportioning  of  these  much  Christian  wis- 
dom will  still  be  needful ;  and  the  lesson  will  constantly  require 
to  be  remembered  that^Christianity  is  ever  its  own  best  witness.^ 
But  this  very  consideration  will  rebuke  any  attempt  to  exclude 
any  element  of  a  sound  apologetics,  because  it  may  happen  for 
the  time  to  be  in  disfavor.  It  is  vain  to  get  rid  of  miracles 
when  the  whole  substance  of  objective  Christianity,  as  based 
on  the  Incarnation,  is  miracle,  and  of  subjective  Christianity 
too,  as  resting  on  the  mission  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  It  is  vain 
to  get  rid  of  prophecies,  when  the  whole  of  Christianity  folds 
in  its  bosom  the  greatest  of  all  prophecies — its  own  final 
victory,  with  its  glories  and  mysteries  of  heaven  and  hell.  So 
it  is  vain  to  extenuate  inspiration  ;  for  though  inspiration  is 
not  the  same  with  revelation,  it  must  be  so  at  least  to  the  ex- 
tent of  conveying  all  its  treasures.  Wherever  we  can,  by  fair 
and  legitimate  interpretation,  harmonize  Scripture  with  history, 
with  philosophy,  with  science,  we  are  not  only  warranted  but 
bound  to  do  so,  since,  all  truth  is  one,  and  God  requires  us  to 
display  it  unbroken.  But  we  shall  not  succeed  in  this,  or  in 
overcoming  the  world,  by  a  timid,  deferential,  and  alarmist 
spirit,  as  if,  in  the  face  of  alleged  advances  of  human  knowl- 
edge, the  revelations  of  Scripture  were  waning  in  their  light, 
and  could  not  be  too  soon  revised  and  conformed  to  other 
"authorities.  Here  we  may  well  borrow  the  manly  and  Chris- 
tian confidence  of  Luther — 

"Das  Wort  sie  sollen  lassen  stahn 
Uud  kein'n  Dank  dazu  haben," 

and  strong  in  our  faith  in  Him  whose  name  is  the  "  Word  of 
God,"  and  whose  oracles  of  truth  outrun  the  light  and  dis- 
covery of  all  ages,  and  have  already  put  so  mapy  predictions 
of  failure  to  shame,  go  on  to  meet  the  ever-expanding  future 
with  the  undismayed  assurance  that  it  will  but  fulfil  those  "ex- 
ceeding great  and  precious  promises"  which  convey  in  their 


STRAUSS— KENAN— MILL.  193 

sublimity  the  evidence  of  their  eternal  truth  and  faithfulness: 
"  Lift  up  your  eyes  to  the  heavens,  and  look  upon  the  earth 
beneath  :  for  the  heavens  shall  vanish  away  like  smoke,  and 
the  earth  shall  wax  old  like  a  garment,  and  they  that  dwell 
therein  shall  die  in  like  manner :  but  my  salvation  shall  be  for- 
ever, f.nd  my  righteousness  shall  not  be  abolished." 


APPENDIX. 


NOTE  A.     Page  11. 

THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  AS  ONE  OF  PROGRESS. 

THERE  is  an  impression  in  many  quarters  that  the  eighteenth 
century  was  barren  and  exhausted.  This  is  the  view  of  Mr. 
Carlyle,  often  stated  by  him  with  something  like  denunciation. 
Much  as  I  value  the  opinion  of  this  great  writer,  I  cannot  follow 
him  here.  There  was,  no  doubt,  much  that  was  shallow  and  arti- 
ficial, doomed  to  a  just  end,  and^Xnuch  of  what  was  professedly 
new  was  like  old  poison  with  a  new^abel^  But  the  century  was 
also  in  many  directions  one  of  new  beginnings.  Not  to  speak  of 
science,  with  the  creation  of  modern  chemistry  and  electricity ;  or 
of  literature,  where  we  see  in  Britain  a  simpler  and  purer  succeed  vy' 
the  Queen  Anne  period,  from  Cowper  onward,  and  where  in  Ger- 
many the  great  names  of  Lessing,  Schiller,  and  Goethe  originate 
the  modern  age ;  or  of  philosophy,  where  Reid  and^lie  Scottish 
school  rise  to  meet  Hume^and  Kant  begins  recent  philosophy — 
even  in  the  political  field^to  which  Mr.  Carlyle  probably  referred, 
there  is  a  great  start ;  for  in  India  the  British  Empire  is  founded ; 
the  conquest  of  Canada  makes  the  New  World  Anglo-Saxon,  and 
not  French  ;  the  wars  of  Frederick  forecast  the  history  of  modern 
Germany  ;  and  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence  comes 
forth  with  all  its  epoch-making  influences,  in  the  train  of  which, 
in  part  at  least,  stands  the  French  Revolution.  In  religion,  the 
great  Methodist  revival  must  be  commemorated,  affecting  through 
Wesley  and  Whitefield  both  the  Old  World  and  the  New,  attend- 
ed with  kindred  movements,  such  as  the  Secession  and  Relief  in 
Scotland,  and  followed,  ere  the  century  ends,  by  the  formation  of 
the  oldest  of  the  great  Missionary  Societies.  There  is  much  be- 
sides  in  the  eighteenth  century ;  but  these  features  are  enough  to 
redeem  it  from  barrenness. 

NOTE  B.     Page  36. 


I  HAD  long  been  convinced  that  there  must  exist  somewhere  a 
Flemish  or  Dutch  edition  of  Grotius's  "  De  Veritate,"  earlier  than 


196  APPENDIX. 

the  Latin.  In  the  first  sentence  of  his  Latin  work  he  speaks  of 
the  argument  of  the  books,  "  quos  pro  religione  Christiana  patriae 
mese  sermone  scripsi."  He  also  says  that  the  work  was  in  verse, 
"  Versibus  inclusi,  quo  rectius  memoriae  mandarentur."  Impelled 
by  this  distinct  assertion,  I  sought,  year  after  year,  to  find  some 
trace  of  this  work  in  all  the  libraries  I  had  access  to,  but  in  vain. 
I  only  learned  that  it  was  likely  to  exist,  if  any  where,  in  Holland. 
About  five  years  ago,  having  a  correspondence  witli  the  late  M. 
Groen  Van  Prinsterer,  I  asked  him  if  he  could  furnish  any  clew  to 
this  inquiry.  He  kindly  sent  me  a  copy  of  the  work  of  his  coun- 
tryman, Dr.  Wijnmalen  of  Leyden,  "  Hugo  de  Groot  als  Verdedi- 
ger  des  Christendoms"  (Grotius  as  an  apologist),  Utrecht,  1869; 
in  the  Appendix  to  which  (I.  and  II.)  there  is  a  full  account  of 
the  Dutch  original  of  the  "  De  Veritate,"  as  (in  III.,  IV.,  and  V.) 
there  are  notices  of  the  Latin  and  other  translations.  It  here  ap- 
pears that  from  1622  to  1728  no  fewer  than  five  editions  of  the 
Dutch  work  came  out,  and  a  new  one  so  late  as  1844.  Wijnmalen 
also  corrects  some  mistakes  current  as  to  the  Latin  editions,  and 
shows  that  the  first  was  issued  in  1627  in  Leyden,  and  the  same 
year  in  Paris.  With  reference  to  the  Dutch  editions,  with  which 
we  are  here  concerned,  and  limiting  ourselves  to  the  earliest,  the 
notices  are  of  extraordinary  bibliographical  interest.  Of  the  first, 
in  1622,  published  soon  after  Grotius's  liberation  from  prison,  only 
two  copies  are  known  to  exist — one  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  Wijn- 
malen, and  one  in  the  Royal  Library  at  the  Hague.  In  the  same 
year  two  reprints  (they  can  hardly  be  called  editions)  of  the  work 
appeared.  These  also  are  of  singular  rarity,  and  vary  very  little 
from  the  first,  or  from  each  other.  One  of  these,  which  agrees 
with  Dr.  Wijnmalen's  description,  is  in  the  library  of  the  New 
College,  Edinburgh.  It  is  a  small  quarto,  nearly  all  in  black-let- 
ter, and  bears  the  title  "  Bewys  van  den  waren  Godsdienst  in  ses 
Boecken  ghestelt,  by  Hugo  de  Groot.  Ghedruckt  in't  Jaer  onses 
Heeren  Duysent  ses  hondert,  xxii."  (Proof  of  the  true  Religion  in 
six  books,  set  forth  by  Hugo  de  Groot.  Printed  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1622). 

On  the  other  side  of  the  title-page  is  the  division  of  the  books, 
which  is  the  same  as  in  the  Latin  editions — the  first,  of  God  and 
Religion;  the  second,  of  the  Truth  and  Excellency  of  the  Chris- 
tian Religion;  the  third,  of  the  Credibility  of  the  Holy  Scriptures ; 
and  the  last  three  against  Heathenism,  Judaism,  and  Mohamme- 
danism. Then  follows  in  Alexandrine  rhyme  an  "  Exhortation  to 
Peace  to  all  Christians," covering  two  pages;  and  the  work  itself, 
which  is  entirely  in  black-letter  (with  the  exception  of  the  sum- 
maries on  the  margin),  follows,  extending  to  111  pages.  The  trea- 
tise is  thus  of  considerable  compass,  since  each  page,  as  a  rule,  has 
forty-four  lines,  the  verses  being  also  Alexandrine,  but  so  arranged 
that  the  first  pair  of  rhymes  have  thirteen  syllables,  and  the  next 
pair  twelve,  all  through.  The  verse  is  flowing,  and,  considering 


APPENDIX.  197 

the  difficulty  of  the  subject,  wonderfully  sustained.  I  only  notice 
that  Grotius,  in  his  fifth  book  against  the  Jews,  applies  in  a  length- 
ened metrical  paraphrase,  the  53d  of  Isaiah  to  the  Messiah,  as  he 
does  in  all  the  Latin  editions,  and  in  his  "  De  Satisfaction  "  to 
the  end — the  only  work  in  \frhich  there  is  any  reference  of  Isaiah 
Mil.  to  Jeremiah,  and  that  with  an  ultimate  reference  to  the  Mes- 
siah, being  his  Commentary  published  after  his  death.  It  may  be 
added,  as  stated  by  Wijnmalen,  that  the  Dutch  edition  was  trans- 
lated both  into  German  verse  and  into  English.  The  German 
translator  was  the  Silesian  poet  Martin  Opitz,  whose  work  ap- 
peared at  Breslau  in  1631.  The  English  translator,  whose  work 
appeared  in  London,  1686, under  the  title  "Hugo  Grotius  on  the 
Truth  of  the  Christian  Religion,  in  English  Verse,"  is  unknown. 
The  rare  copy  in  the  New  College  Library,  after  the  work  thus 
described,  contains  also  in  Dutch  three  other  treatises  by  Grotius 
— one  a  collection  of  metrical  paraphrases  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, and  other  parts  of  Scripture,  with  prayers;  another,  a  Dia- 
logue between  a  Father  on  the  Duty  of  Speaking  Little ;  and  the 
third,  another  Dialogue  between  Grotius  and  his  daughter  Cor- 
nelia on  Baptism.  These  poems  are,  unlike  the  work  on  evidences, 
connected  with  a  place  of  publication,  "Delf;"  and  are  earlier  in 
date,  the  first  being  in  1621,  and  the  two  last  in  1619.  In  conclu- 
sion, I  have,  for  assistance  obtained  in  consulting  this  volume  and 
ascertaining  these  facts,  to  thank  the  Rev.  Janics  Kennedy,  B.D., 
Librarian  of  the  New  College. 

I  have  to  add  that  through  the  courtesy  of  George  Bullen,  Esq., 
Keeper  of  the  British  Museum,  I  am  permitted  to  say  that,  accord- 
ing to  a  careful  examination  by  him,  the  oldest  copy  of  the  Dutch 
poem  on  the  Evidences  in  the  Museum  is  of  the  same  date  (1622) 
with  that  in  the  New  College,  and  otherwise  exactly  resembles  it, 
wanting,  however,  the  other  poems,  which  in  the  New  College 
copy  have  "  Delf"  on  the  title-page.  These,  however,  with  others, 
arc  found  in  two  later  editions  of  1648  and  1652  respectively,  also 
in  the  Museum,  and  which  only  differ,  as  to  the  "Bewys"  of  1622, 
in  having  each  a  new  and  distinct  title-page.  Mr.  Bullen  has  dis- 
covered that  Dr.  Wijnmalen's  idea  that  the  English  version  of 
1686  was  made  from  the  Dutch  poem  is  unsupported.  It  is  in  the 
Museum ;  and  is  dedicated  to  the  Honorable  Robert  Boyle,  the 
versifier  being  unknown ;  but  he  founds  on  the  Latin,  and  pro- 
his  ignorance  of  Dutch.  The  exact  title  of  the  wrork  is 
"Grotius,  his  Arguments  for  the  Truth  of  Christian  Religion,  ren- 
dered into  plain  English  Verse.  London,  1686."  Of  himself  the 
translator  thus  speaks:  "  If  this  version  appear  dull  and  flat,  I  hope 
it  will  be  considered  that  it  is  but  a  copy  of  a  copy;  and  if  I  had 
understood  the  original  Dutch  poem,  us  I  should  have  had  more 
assistance  to  fancy,  I  know  not  but  I  might  have  offered  here 
something  more  poetical." 


198  APPENDIX. 

NOTE  C.     Page  39. 

HERBERT'S  NOTITI^E  COMMUNES. 

* 

IT  is  not  possible  here  to  go  into  a  criticism  of  Lord  Herbert's 
theory  of  knowledge  in  his  "  De  Veritate,"  considered  as  a  founda- 
tion of  his  Common  Notions.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  while  he 
here  and  there  anticipates  on  general  metaphysical  ground  the 
conclusions  of  Kant,  as  also  of  the  Scottish  school,  as  has  been 
recognized  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  as  to  an  a  priori  knowledge  being 
the  condition  of  experience,  and  as  to  universality  and  necessity 
being  the  marks,  though,  according  to  him,  by  no  means  the  sole 
ones,  of  this  a  priori  knowledge,  his  investigations  in  detail  are 
incoherent  and  arbitrary  in  their  results.  He  makes  no  attempt 
at  all,  in  his  "  De  Veritate,"  to  establish  his  so-called  Notitm  Com- 
munes in  religion  by  any  critical  process  in  the  least  resembling 
Kant's,  or,  indeed,  by  any  other,  but  simply  assumes  and  reasserts 
them,  as  having,  and  as  alone  having,  absolute  and  primary  truth. 
As  they  are  thus  not  built  upon  any  theory  of  pure  reason,  except 
by  assertion,  so  are  they  equally  (to  use  the  language  of  Kant)  re- 
moved from  any  postulation  or  deduction  of  practical  reason ; 
and  thus,  as  left  by  Herbert,  these  notions  are  wholly  unfitted,  as 
a  complete  and  closed  group,  to  exclude  the  addenda  (if  needed) 
of  revelation. 

NOTE  D.     Page  50. 

DID   BAYLE    FORMALLY    REJECT    CHRISTIANITY? 

IN  his  article  "Pyrrhon,"  Bayle  perhaps  comes  nearer  than 
anywhere  else  to  a  formal  rejection  of  Christianity.  He  says  in 
the  text,  "  It  is  with  reason  that  Pyrrhonism  is  detested  in  the 
schools  of  theology ;"  and  then,  in  Note  B,  he  lays  open,  as  he 
imagines,  the  inherent  contradictions  of  the  Christian  system. 
It  is  true  that  he  puts  his  objections  into  the  mouth  of  one  abbe*, 
who  is  a  philosopher,  reasoning  with  another  who  is  a  simple  be- 
liever; but  there  is  a  sympathy  with  the  negative  side  which  it 
is  difficult  to  disguise.  He  arranges  the  difficulties  first  under 
the  head  of  doctrine,  and  then  of  morals.  The  first  contradiction 
is  in  the  Trinity:  "It  is  evident  that  things  which  are  not  differ- 
ent from  a  third  do  not  differ  from  each  other.  This  is  the  basis 
of  all  our  reasonings,  and  on  it  we  found  all  our  syllogisms ;  and 
yet  the  revelation  of  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity  assures  us  that 
this  maxim  is  false.  Invent  as  many  distinctions  as  you  please, 
you  will  never  show  that  this  maxim  is  not  falsified  by  this  great 
mystery."  This  strain  is  pursued  in  the  second  exception  :  "  It  is 
evident  that  there  is  no  difference  between  individual,  nature, 
person ;  yet  the  same  mystery  has  convinced  us  that  persons  may 
be  multiplied,  without  the  individuals  and  natures  ceasing  to  be 


APPENDIX.  199 

unique."  The  third  shaft  is  levelled  at  the  Incarnation :  "  It  is 
evident  that  to  make  a  man  who  is  really  and  perfectly  a  person, 
it  is  enough  to  unite  a  human  body  and  a  reasonable  soul.  But 
the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  has  taught  us  that  this  is  not  suffi- 
cient. Whence  it  follows  that  neither  you  nor  I  could  be  certain 
that  we  are  persons;  for  if  it  were  essential  to  a  human  body  and 
a  reasonable  soul,  united,  to  constitute  a  person,  God  could  never 
make  them  not  to  constitute  it ;  whence  it  follows  that  to  them 
personality  is  purely  accidental.  Now,  every  accident  is  separable 
from  its  subject  in  divers  ways;  it  is  therefore  possible  for  God 
to  hinder  us  from  being  persons  by  these  divers  means,  though  we 
are  composed  of  bodies  and  souls ;  and  who  will  assure  us  that 
he  does  not  make  use  of  some  one  of  these  means  to  despoil  us  of 
personality  ?  Is  he  obliged  to  reveal  to  us  all  the  ways  in  which 
he  disposes  of  us  ?"  These  attacks  show  Bayle's  usual  acuteness, 
though  his  last  instance  is  hardly  based  on  the  law  of  contradic- 
tion, as  his  other  two  profess  to  be,  and  begs  the  question  as  to 
whether  a  personality  of  one  kind  may  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be 
conserved  in  a  higher.  The  recoil  from  Christianity,  however,  is 
evident ;  and  not,  as  in  the  two  next  particulars,  which  deal  with 
the  Eucharist  and  Transubstantiation,  solely  from  Romanism.  Nor 
is  it  necessary  to  follow  him  into  his  moral  difficulties,  which  sim- 
ply reiterate  the  inadmissibility  of  belief  in  a  God  who  is  so  un- 
like a  good  man  as  to  suffer  evil  when  he  could  hinder  it ;  though 
he  also  goes  on  to  reject  the  Christian  doctrine  of  original  sin. 
Other  Christian  mysteries,  such  as  the  Atonement,  Bayle  does  not 
here  touch  upon. 

NOTE  E.     Page  65. 
WOOLS-TON'S  IMPKISONMENT  AND  DEATH. 

THE  place  where  Voltaire  touches  on  Woolston  is  in  his  article 
on  "  Miracles,"  in  his  "  Philosophical  Dictionary,"  vol.  vii.  Having 
given  an  account  of  Woolston's  views,  and  quoted  some  of  his 
strongest  language,  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  his  trial  before  Lord 
Chief-justice  Raymond  in  1729,  and  its  results:  "Woolston  was 
put  in  prison  and  sentenced  to  a  fine,  and  to  give  security  for  £150 
sterling.  His  friends  furnished  the  security,  and  he  did  not  die 
in  prison,  as  it  is  said  in  some  of  our  dictionaries  that  are  written 
at  hazard  [faits  au  hasard].  He  died  in  his  own  house  [chez  lui] 
in  London,  after  having  pronounced  these  words :  '  This  is  a  pass 
that  every  man  must  come  to '  [Jest  un  pas  que  tout  Tiomme  doit 
faire\,"  vol.  vii.,  pp.  113-114.  There  are  differences  here  between 
Voltaire  and  Lechler,  the  latter  of  whom,  "Geschichte  des  eng- 
lischen  Deismus,"  pp.  294-295,  makes  the  fine  £150,  while  the 
security  was  as  high  as  £2000 — viz.,  for  two  securities  £1000  each, 
or  for  four  £500  each ;  and  as  Woolston  could  not  procure  this, 
he  remained  and  died  in  prison.  It  was  not  the  discord  as  to  the 


200  APPENDIX. 

fine  or  security  that  struck  ine,  but  as  to  the  liberation  or  death 
in  prison  ;  and  I  was  convinced  that  Voltaire  must  have  had  some 
ground  for  his  confident  assertion,  as  he  was  in  England  when 
Woolston's  writings  excited  universal  attention.  Accordingly,  in 
1872,  I  made  researches  in  the  British  Museum,  and  found  the  fol- 
lowing notice  of  Woolston's  death  in  the  Daily  Courant,  Monday, 
Jan.  29, 1732-33,  No.  5244 :  "  On  Saturday  night,  about  nine  o'clock, 
died  Mr.  Woolston,  author  of  the  'Discourses  on  our  Saviour's 
Miracles,1  in  the  sixty-sixth  year  of  his  age.  About  five  minutes 
before  he  died  he  uttered  these  words :  '  This  is  a  struggle  which 
all  men  must  go  through,  and  which  I  bear  not  only  with  patience, 
but  willingness.'  Upon  which  he  closed  his  eyes  and  shut  his 
lips,  with  a  seeming  design  to  compose  his  face  with  decency,  with- 
out the  help  of  a  friend's  hand,  and  then  he  expired."  Here 
nothing  is  said  of  the  place  of  Woolston's  death,  but  the  expres- 
sion quoted  shows  the  accuracy  of  Voltaire's  knowledge.  I  found 
also  in  the  British  Museum  a  short  life  of  Woolston,  evidently 
prepared  by  a  friend,  and  bearing  this  title,  "  The  Life  of  Mr. 
Woolstou,  with  an  Impartial  Account  of  his  Writings.  London  : 
printed  for  J.  Roberts  at  the  Oxford  Arms,  in  Warwick  Lane, 
1733."  It  bears  the  name  of  no  author;  but  it  connects  itself 
with  the  obituary  in  the  Daily  Courant  by  giving  Woolston's  last 
utterance  in  the  very  same  words,  so  that  it  is  evidently  from  one 
of  his  friends.  This  pamphlet  seems  to  furnish  the  means  of  rec- 
onciling the  otherwise  conflicting  statements.  "  Mr.  Woolston 
was  sentenced  to  a  year's  imprisonment,  and  to  pay  a  fine  of 
£100.  He  purchased  the  liberty  of  the  Rules  of  the  King's 
Bench,  where  he  continued  after  the  expiration  of  the  year, 
through  an  inability  of  paying  the  fine  "  (u  Life,"  pp.  15-16).  But 
that  this  restraint  wras  very  moderate  is  shown  by  another  pas- 
sage, where  "his  own  door"  is  spoken  of,  and  a  liberty  of  move- 
ment affirmed  of  others  not  likely  to  have  been  in  severe  durance  : 
"  While  he  was  in  the  rules  of  the  King's  Bench  he  met  with  sev- 
eral insults  from  ignorant  and  wricked  zealots.  He  was  twice  at- 
tacked before  his  own  door  by  a  fellow  who  struck  him  several 
times  in  his  second  assault,  telling  him  that  he  had  writ  against 
his  Saviour,  and  that  he  deserved  such  usage ;  but  Mr.  Woolston 
was  rescued  from  him  by  a  gentleman  who  chastised  the  man 
with  a  good  beating"  (p.  26).  Again,  that  Mr.  Woolston  had  a 
house,  or  at  least  something  very  different  from  a  cell,  is  evident 
from  this  extract:  "About  half  an  hour  before  he  died,  he  was 
sitting  by  the  fire  in  the  bedchamber,  when  he  asked  his  nurse 
to  help  him  to  bed"  (p.  29). 

In  harmony  with  the  inference  suggested  by  these  extracts,  I 
learned,  on  visiting  the  Old  King's  Bench  Prison  in  Southwark, 
now  converted  into  a  prison  for  convicts,  that  there  had  been,  in 
the  days  when  it  was  used  in  part  for  the  detention  of  debtors,  a 
portion  of  the  building,  called  the  State-house,  where  they  lived 


APPENDIX.  201 

at  their  own  expense  and  enjoyed  a  considerable  amount  of  lib- 
erty; and  similar  recollections  of  what  the  so-called  ''liberty  of 
the  King's  Bench  "  allowed  existed  in  the  neighborhood,  and  on 
the  part  of  others  who  could  recall  the  state  of  the  metropolis  be- 
fore later  changes  in  our  prison  system.  While,  therefore,  it  ia 
much  to  be  regretted  that  Woolston  should  have  suffered  at  all, 
there  is,  beyond  the  interest  of  these  results  as  clearing  up  an  ap- 
parently insuperable  historical  discord,  the  consolation  of  seeing 
that  Christianity  was  not  burdened  in  his  case  with  any  aggra- 
vated severity ;  and  the  life  to  which  I  have  referred  bears  hon- 
orable testimony  to  the  exertions  of  those  who  lamented  this 
prosecution,  and  sought  to  abridge  its  penalty.  This  is  especial- 
ly related  of  Dr.  Samuel  Clarke.  "  Dr.  Clarke,  a  short  time  before 
his  death,  began  his  solicitations  at  court  for  the  releasement  of 
Mr.  Woolston,  declaring  that  he  did  not  undertake  it  as  an  ap- 
prover of  his  doctrine,  but  as  an  advocate  of  that  liberty  which 
he  had  through  his  life  defended.  He  looked  on  Mr.  Woolston 
as  one  under  persecution  for  religion,  which  he  thought  incon- 
sistent with  the  liberties  of  England  and  with  the  doctrines  of 
Christianity,  and  on  this  laudable  principle  he  solicited  the  re- 
lief of  the  oppressed,  but  was  hindered  from  proceeding  in  his 
virtuous  design  by  death  soon  after  Mr.  Woolston's  commitment " 
("  Life  of  Woolstou,"  p.  17). 

NOTE  F.     Page  74. 


THOUGH  Warburton  cannot  come  in  as  a  special  answerer  of 
Morgan — for,  as  has  been  said,  the  chronology  is  against  this,  and 
he  has  answered  at  far  greater  length  Shaftesbury,  Collins,  Tindal, 
and  Bolingbrokc— yet  a  work  so  celebrated  as  his  "Divine  Lega- 
tion "  may  well  receive  a  brief  notice,  all  the  more  that  he  is  one 
of  those  writers,  overestimated  in  his  own  age  and  underesti- 
mated in  ours,  who  belong  to  the  permanent  literature  of  this 
question,  and  who  serve  as  landmarks  of  its  variation  and  prog- 
ress. Largely  as  his  adventurous  thought  and  vast  reading  were 
neutralized  by  paradox,  he  belongs  still  to  the  rare  family  of  think- 
ers and  critics  who  leave  no  question  as  they  found  it,  and  whose 
very  errors  provoke  an  agitation  that  extends  the  range  of  truth. 
Though  he  despised  and  even  trampled  on  his  opponents,  it  was 
more  from  controversial  habit  than  from  malignity,  and  the  regret 
with  which  he  often  finds  himself  alone  among  the  defenders  of 
Christianity  is  a  proof  of  his  sincerity.  He  has  failed  in  discover- 
ing a  new  proof  of  the  divine  mission  of  Moses,  if  he  has  not  even 
endangered  the  common  argument ;  but  in  the  course  of  his  long 
and  various  treatise  he  has  suggested  not  a  few  traces  of  thought 
for  which  apologetics  are  richer  and  stronger. 

9* 


202  APPENDIX. 

The  "Divine  Legation  of  Moses"  began  to  be  published  in  1738, 
and  the  second  part  came  out  in  1741.  This  comprised  the  first 
six  books — all  that  ever  appeared  in  successive  enlarged  editions 
in  the  author's  time — the  ninth  book  being  inserted  in  his  works 
by  Dr.  Hurd  after  his  death.  It  provoked,  as  was  inevitable,  end- 
less controversy,  and  a  full  summing-up  of  its  results  is  perhaps  a 
desideratum  in  our  literature.'  The  following  notices  are  all  that 
can  be  here  afforded. 

The  method  of  Warburton  is  complicated  by  different  syllogisms 
working  into  each  other.  But,  as  an  argument,  its  force  is  reduci- 
ble to  one  principle,  that  where  a  lawgiver  does  not  use,  or  is  not 
supported  by,  a  belief  in  future  rewards  and  punishments,  their 
place  must  be  supplied  by  an  extraordinary  Providence  dispensing 
these  sanctions  in  this  life.  The  fact  which  he  connects  with  this 
principle  is  that  Moses  made  no  use  of  a  future  state  in  his  legisla- 
tion ;  whence  the  conclusion  is  drawn  that  he  was  divinely  sup- 
ported, i.  e.,  had  his  mission  attested  by  a  present  supernatural  Prov- 
idence. Only  a  bold  and  daring  mind  could  have  seized  on  such 
a  position,  equally  questionable  in  both  its  parts ;  but  it  is  exactly 
here  that  the  resources  of  Warburton's  argumentation  come  to 
light ;  and  while  a  common  reasoner  would  soon  have  been  driven 
to  the  wall,  he  prolongs  a  very  copious  and  plausible  argument, 
where  the  very  involutions  of  the  chain  hide  its  weakness. 

Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  than  the  survey  of  the  ancient 
religious  history  of  the  world,  which  is  undertaken  to  show  the 
extreme  anxiety  of  lawgivers  to  impress  truth  in  the  form  of  na- 
tional belief  on  their  people's  minds.  But  Warburton  has  failed 
to  show  that  this  went  so  prevailingly  into  the  future  as  to  make 
out  the  difference  between  Moses  and  other  lawgivers.  They  used 
to  avast  extent  the  present  sanctions  of  religion  as  instruments  of 
government;  and  much  more  of  the  life  of  the  nation  w  as  appar- 
ently bestowed  upon  gaining  the  favor  of  the  gods  for  its  collec- 
tive welfare  in  time  than  in  inculcating  truths  as  to  the  retribu- 
tions of  individuals  in  an  after-state.  Hence  the  whole  of  War- 
burton's  interesting  discussions  as  to  the  Mysteries,  to  say  nothing 
of  such  private  opinions  as  that  these  were  reflected  in  the  sixth 
book  of  Virgil  or  the  Metamorphosis  of  Apuleius,  come  short  of 
the  mark.  This  failure  is  aggravated  by  what  he  says  of  the  phi- 
losophers ;  for  though,  according  to  him,  they  all  professed  faith 
'in  future  rewards  and  punishments,  they  all  privately  disbelieved 
this;  so  that  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  in  this  case  either  they  or 
the  lawgivers  found  so  much  heart  to  profess  or  propagate  it.  or 
how,  with  so  many  influential  elements  of  scepticism  abroad,  they 
could  have  been  so  well  rewarded  by  popular  credulity.  This 
makes  it  hard  to  create  a  precedent  in  the  matter,  which  Moses  was 
bound  on  ordinary  principles  to  follow ;  and  then,  even  had  all  the 
other  lawgivers  been  united  in  using  the  sanctions  of  the  future, 
Warburton  is  hardly  able,  even  granting  that  Moses  saw  all  this 


APPENDIX.  203 

kind  of  statecraft  in  Egypt,  to  shut  up  Moses,  as  a  reason  for  neg- 
lecting it,  to  the  one  alternative,  that  he  had  a  miraculous  Provi- 
dence ready  at  hand ;  for  Moses  might  simply  mistake,  thinking 
that  he  could  govern  without  either  future  sanctions  or  a  present 
extraordinary  Providence :  or  some  other  reason,  in  the  unknown 
possibilities  of  human  motive,  might  have  accounted  for  his  course. 
Therefore,  even  if  the  other  lawgivers  here  left  Moses  so  relatively 
weak,  it  would  only  be  an  hypothesis  that  he  had  a  better  strength 
at  his  disposal ;  it  could  not  be  a  proved  conclusion. 

The  other  premise  of  Warburtou's  main  argument,  the  minor,  is 
left  by  him  in  an  equally  unsatisfactory  state  of  proof.  Much,  no 
doubt,  looks  at  first  sight  in  Warburton's  favor.  The  future  in 
the  Jewish  horizon  shows  a  blank,  so  far  as  legislation  is  concern- 
ed. But  Warburton  hardly  seems  to  have  considered  how  far 
such  a  belief,  as  he  grants  Moses  personally  had,  in  a  life  to  come, 
needed  to  come  in  as  the  sanction  of  laws;  for,  in  avowedly 
Christian  governments  (whatever  may  be  made  of  ancient  law- 
givers) it  does  not,  and  a  theocracy  had  so  far  to  govern  upon 
temporal  principles.  And  he  seems  equally  to  have  underrated 
the  belief,  unexpressed  and  inexpressible  in  legislation,  which  so 
far  coexisted  with  it  from  the  beginning,  and,  as  Warburton  him- 
self grants,  came  out  in  the  prophets  and  later  Jewish  literature. 
Such  admissions  as  he  makes  ("  Divine  Legation,"  v.,  p.  423, 
"  What  will  follow?  that  Moses  taught  a  future  state — the  prop- 
osition I  oppose  ?  No ;  but  that  from  Moses  and  the  prophets 
together  a  future  state  might  be  collected — a  proposition  I  have  no 
occasion  to  oppose  ")  might  have  led  him  to  estimate  more  favor- 
ably the  later  dawn,  whereas  the  negative  spirit  of  his  criticism 
pursues  him  even  here.  All  the  later  notices  of  immortality  in 
the  Old  Testament  are  reduced  to  a  minimum.  The  very  prophets 
have  hardly  one  clear  utterance  quoted ;  the  Psalms,  which  have 
so  wonderfully  stretched  out,  so  as  to  adapt  themselves  to  the 
fullest  Christian  hopes  of  the  vision  of  God,  he  draws  back  to 
mere  earthly  communion ;  and  his  strange  theory  of  Job,  that  it 
sets  forth  the  adversities  of  the  Jewish  people  on  their  return  from 
the  Captivity,  naturally  only  ends  in  his  interpreting  the  words, 
"  I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth  "  (words  which  even  Ewald 
connects  with  immortal  hope),  in  the  exclusive  sense  of  national 
deliverance.  It  only  remained  to  have  struck  away  the  New 
Testament  assertions  as  to  earlier  knowledge  of  a  future  life,  such 
as  our  Lord's  argument  with  the  Pharisees,  "  God  is  not  the -God 
of  the  dead,"  etc.,  and  his  parable  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus 
possessing  in  the  writings  of  Moses  and  the  prophets  something 
equal  to  a  voice  from  the  dead  ;  and,  if  possible,  more  decisive,  the 
llth  of  the  Hebrews.  But  Warburton  will  not  deny  this  evidence, 
though  he  limits  the  hope  of  a  better  country  to  the  "patriarchs 
and  leaders  of  the  Jewish  people  "  (v.,  p.  432).  But  when  so  much 
is  granted,  the  residue  becomes  a  vanishing  quantity,  and  the  log- 


204  APPENDIX. 

ical  support  of  an  extraordinary  Providence  is  indefinitely  weak- 
ened. So  much  of  hope  in  the  older  Jewish  mind  as  was  sufficient 
to  generate,  or  to  harmonize  with,  that  later  expectation  (before 
Christ)  which  Warburton  grants,  is  too  much  for  his  scheme ;  and 
hence  he  instinctively  evacuates  every  brightening  promise,  and, 
against  his  own  better  nature,  verges  here  to  rationalism  in  order 
to  support  Christianity. 

It  has  often  seemed  to  me,  however,  that  this  great  writer  could 
not  be  altogether  mistaken,  and  that  there  is  an  element  of  truth 
in  this  remarkable  treatise.  There  is  a  common  principle  in  a 
present  extraordinary  or  miraculous  Providence,  and  in  a  future 
life.  Each  is  a  form  of  the  supernatural;  and  hence  the  one  can 
do  the  work  of  the  other.  The  one  can  even  be  a  revelation  of 
the  other,  suggesting  it,  and  rousing  up  the  latent  idea  of  it  that 
is  in  the  mind.  Our  Saviour  has  taught  us  that  the  presence 
of  the  living  God  is  the  suggestion  of  immortality.  The  soul  in 
that  atmosphere  cannot  shake  off  the  idea,  if  God  be  friendly, 
nor  even  if  he  be  hostile.  And  what  is  true  of  the  realization 
of  God,  as  bringing  with  it  the  sense  of  immortality  to  his  moral 
creatures,  is  still  more  manifest  of  God,  acting  in  a  miraculous 
way,  and  as  it  were  coming  nearer  than  before.  Hence  the 
Israelites  did  not  need  the  verbal  revelation  of  immortality,  as 
it  might  otherwise  have  been  granted ;  for  it  was  given  in  his 
awful  nearness  and  mighty  as  well  as  gracious  works.  Whatever 
dimmer  truth  they  may  have  otherwise  had  was  thus  vitalized. 
This  seems  the  permanent  element  in  Warburton's  speculations  ; 
but  the  extraordinary  Providence  was  not  so  much  the  substitute 
of  a  future  life  as  its  vehicle  and  its  illumination.  Nor  could  tho 
presence  of  the  one  be  argued  from  the  absence  of  the  other;  but 
from  the  presence  of  the  one  a  virtual  conjunction  of  both. 

NOTE  G.     Page  113. 

RELATION    OF   ROUSSEAU   TO    CHRISTIANITY. 

THE  question  has  not  been  very  fully  discussed,  what  was 
Rousseau's  true  relation  in  point  of  belief  (conduct  is  not  in  ques- 
tion) towards  Christianity.  This  is  by  no  means  without  its  diffi- 
culties. He  loudly  complained  of  the  injustice  of  the  semi-ration- 
alist clergy  of  Geneva,  who  could  not  tell  whether  they  themselves 
were  Arians  or  Socinians,  in  denying  him  the  Christian  name. 
But  for  this  he  was  largely  himself  to  blame.  Whatever  saving 
clauses  he  had  inserted  in  connection  with  the  creed  of  the  Savoy 
vicar,  this  could  not  abate  the  impression  made  by  the  fact,  that 
he  had  chosen  such  a  person  for  his  spokesman  on  religion,  and, 
still  more,  that,  after  the  sublime  passage  on  the  character  of  Jesus, 
he  had  brought  in  the  disappointing  sentences :  "  With  all  this, 
the  same  gospel  is  full  of  things  incredible,  of  things  repugnant 


APPENDIX.  205 

to  reason,  and  which  it  is  impossible  for  any  man  of  sense  to  con- 
ceive or  admit.  What  are  we  to  do  in  the  midst  of  all  these  con- 
tradictions ?  It  is  your  duty,  my  child,  to  be  always  modest  and 
circumspect ;  to  respect  in  silence  that  which  we  can  neither  re- 
ject nor  comprehend,  and  to  humble  ourselves  before  the  great 
Being  who  alone  knows  the  truth"  ((Euvres,  ix.,  pp.  117, 118). 

It  was  unfair,  therefore,  in  Rousseau  to  expect  that  passages 
like  this,  and  the  others  in  which  the  vicar  dissects  the  external 
evidences  of  Christianity,  would  be  set  down  to  the  mere  mise  en 
scene  of  an  orthodox  priest,  depressing  other  arguments  to  exalt  the 
tinal  testimony  of  the  Church ;  for  it  rather  looked  like  the  creed 
of  a  doubter  among  the  clergy,  such  as  was  then  too  common. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  the  Letter  to  the  Arch- 
bishop, and  still  more  the  Letters  from  the  Mountain,  retrieve 
Rousseau's  position,  and  distinguish  him  very  greatly  from  the 
school  of  Voltaire.  It  is  true  there  is  much  that  is  sadly  disap- 
pointing still.  lie  has  no  just  conception  of  the  stupendous  im- 
portance of  the  doctrinal  side  of  Christianity,  as  he  sees  in  the 
Reformation  in  Geneva  and  elsewhere  no  body  of  vital  truth,  but 
only  a  right  of  every  man  against  Rome  to  assert  his  private 
judgment.  The  argument  from  miracles  he  wholly  sets  aside; 
for  while  he  does  not  deny  that  our  Lord  and  others  may  have 
wrought  them,  he  cannot  find  criteria  by  which  to  distinguish 
them  from  extraordinary  works  of  nature,  or  even  of  evil  beings, 
so  that  they  are  not  helps  but  obstacles  of  faith.  No  one,  perhaps, 
has  stated  these  objections  with  more  force  or  acuteness ;  but  he 
is  the  victim  here  of  his  own  ingenuity;  for  the  Bible  miracles 
do  not,  by  any  progress  of  research,  tend  more  to  be  reduced  to 
natural  phenomena,  and  the  cures,  for  example,  of  Jesus— after  a 
hundred  years  of  wonderful  medical  discovery — do  not  in  the  least 
admit,  more  than  in  Rousseau's  days,  of  scientific  explanation. 
But,  abating  this  grave  defect,  and  the  necessary  lowering  which 
it  involved  of  Christ's  supernatural  mission  and  character,  there  is 
in  Rousseau  a  strenuous  assertion  of  faith  in  the  moral  character 
and  claims  of  Jesus  as  sui  generis,  and  in  the  self-evidencing  power 
of  the  Bible  to  convey  itself  as  a  revelation,  without  extraneous 
arguments.  The  following  extracts  will  make  these  points  clear. 
First,  Rousseau  appeals  to  what  he  had  said  in  his  "  l^mile,"  and 
said,  doubtless  sincerely,  regarding  the  character  of  Jesus  Christ, 
as  retaining  its  force,  in  spite  of  his  inability  to  use  the  argument 
from  miracles :  "  I  declare  myself  a  Christian  ;  my  persecutors  say 
that  I  am  not.  They  prove  that  I  am  not  a  Christian  because  I  re- 
ject  revelation ;  and  they  prove  that  I  reject  revelation  because 
I  do  not  believe  in  miracles.  But,  to  make  this  consequence  just, 
one  of  two  things  would  be  requisite:  either  that  miracles  were 
the  only  proof  of  revelation,  or  that  I  rejected  the  other  proofs 
equally.  Now,  it  is  not  true  that  miracles  are  the  only  proof  of 
revelation;  and  it  is  not  true  that  I  reject  the  other  proofs,  since, 


206  APPENDIX. 

on  the  contrary,  they  are  found  established  in  the  very  work  in 
which  they  accuse  me  of  destroying  revelation  "  ("  Letters  from 
the  Mountain,"  vol.  x.,  p.  252). 

Second,  He  reaffirms  the  self-evidencing  power  of  the  Christian 
morality.  "  The  first,  the  most  important,  the  most  certain  of  these 
characters  is  derived  from  the  nature  of  the  doctrine,  that  is  to 
say,  from  its  utility,  its  beauty,  its  holiness,  its  truth,  its  profundity, 
and  all  the  other  qualities  that  can  announce  to  man  the  instruc- 
tions of  the  Supreme  Wisdom  and  the  precepts  of  the  Supreme 
Goodness.  This  character,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  most  sure,  the 
most  infallible;  it  carries  in  itself  a  proof  that  dispenses  with 
every  other;  but  it  is  less  easy  to  verify  (constater)  ;  it  demands, 
to  make  it  felt,  study,  reflection,  knowledge,  discussions  which 
only  pertain  to  wise  men  (hommes  sage*)  who  are  instructed  and 
know  how  to  reason"  ("Letters  from  the  Mountain," vol.  x.,  pp. 
248,  249. 

Third,  He  states  fully  the  immediate  testimony  of  the  Bible  to 
its  own  divinity.  This  is  in  the  Letter  to  Archbishop  de  Beau- 
mont, who  had  in  his  pastoral  used  expressions  against  which 
Rousseau  protests.  These  are  given  in  italics.  "  Nevertheless  the 
~^L  author  does  not  believe,  but  as  the  result  of  human  testimonies.  Mon- 
seigneur,  you  are  deceived.  I  recognize  [the  authenticity]  as  the 
result  of  the  gospel  itself  and  the  sublimity  which  I  see  in  it  with- 
out any  attestation.  I  have  no  need  for  any  one  to  affirm  the  ex- 
istence of  the  gospel,  when  I  hold  it  in  my  hands.  It  is  (ihray* 
men  who  report  to  him  what  other  men  have  reported.  Not  at  all; 
they  do  not  report  to  me  that  the  gospel  exists;  I  see  it  with  my 
own  eyes;  and  if  all  the  world  was  to  maintain  that  it  did  not,  I 
should  know  well  enough  that  the  whole  world  lied  or  was  de- 
ceived. Men  between  God  and  him!  Not  even  one.  The  gospel 
is  the  piece  that  decides ;  and  that  piece  is  in  my  hands.  How- 
ever it  has  come  there,  and  whoever  its  writer,  I  recognize  in  it 
the  Divine  Spirit:  that  is  as  immediate  as  it  can  be;  there  are  no 
men  between  that  proof  and  me;  and  in  the  sense  in  which  there 
would  be,  the  historic  side  of  this  holy  book,  of  its  authors,  the 
time  when  it  was  composed,  etc.,  belong  to  the  discussions  of 
criticism,  where  the  moral  proof  is  admitted.  Such  is  the  answer 
of  the  Savoy  vicar  "  ("  Letter  to  M.  de  Beaumont,"  (Euvres,  vol.  x., 
p.  115). 

These  passages  perhaps  exhibit  the  character  of  Rousseau's 
creed  as  stronger  than  has  been  generally  admitted ;  and  with 
another  extract  from  his  letter  to  M.  de  Beaumont,  in  which  he 
explains  the  unhappy  addendum  to  the  eloquent  passage  on  the 
character  of  Christ  (given  in  the  beginning  of  this  note),  the  dis- 
cussion may  be  ended.  "  On  the  feeble  authorities  given  for  the 
gospel,  he  would  reject  it  for  the  reasons  above  indicated,  if  the 
Divine  Spirit  which  shines  in  the  morality  and  in  the  doctrine  of 
the  book  did  not  restore  it  all  the  force  which  human  testimony 


APPENDIX.  207 

wants  on  such  a  point.  He  admits,  then,  this  sacred  book,  with  all 
the  admirable  things  which  it  contains,  and  which  the  human 
mind  can  understand  ;  but  as  for  the  things  incredible  which  he 
finds  there, l  things  repugnant  to  reason,  and  which  it  is  impossible 
for  any  man  of  sense  either  to  conceive  or  admit,  he  respects  them  in 
sifrjice,  and  humlles  himself  before  the  great  Being  who  alone  Motes 
the  truth?  Such  is  his  scepticism,  and  it  is  involuntary,  being 
founded  on  reasons,  invincible  on  one  side  and  other,  and  which 
force  the  reason  to  be  in  suspense.  This  scepticism  is  that  of 
every  Christian,  reasonable  and  of  good  faith,  who  does  not  wish 
to  know  things  of  heaven,  other  than  he  can  comprehend,  other 
than  bear  on  his  conduct,  and  who,  with  the  apostle,  rejects  fool- 
ish and  unlearned  questions,  and  those  that  gender  strifes  "  ("Letter," 
etc.,  (Euvres,  vol.  x.,  pp.  117, 118). 

NOTE  II.     Page  134. 

DOCTRINAL    CREED    OF    EICHHORN. 

No  words  can,  so  well  as  their  own,  give  my  readers  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  extent  to  which,  in  the  case  of  men  like  Eich- 
liorn,  the  tone  of  Christianity  had  been  lowered.  Hence  I  shall 
translate  the  passage,  with  which  his  third  and  last  volume  of  the 
"Introduction  to  the  New  Testament"  begins  in  speaking  of 
Jesus  and  his  apostles. 

"  When  Jesus  parted  from  his  disciples,  his  doctrinal  system 
was  only  present  in  faint  outlines.  He  had  taken  for  granted  the 
doctrines  of  God,  Providence,  and  Immortality,  simply  as  general 
principles,  without  proving  them,  or  showing  their  connection 
with  the  universal  sense  of  truth.  He  had  exhibited  God  as  the 
ideal  of  holiness,  and  as  the  model  after  which  men  were  inces- 
santly to  strive,  and  the  moral  law  as  a  divine  precept,  in  the  fol- 
lowing of  which  the  condition  of  divine  favor  and  of  happiness 
was  to  be  fulfilled.  With  the  credit  of  a  divinely  commissioned 
teacher,  he  presented  only  results,  without,  at  the  same  time,  laying 
open  what  followed  for  individual  faith  and  practice.  Neither 
the  nature  of  the  human  mind,  nor  the  capacities  of  his  first 
scholars,  nor  the  duration  of  his  ministry,  allowed  Jesus  to  ex- 
haust everything.  The  weak  eye  must  be  accustomed  gradually 
by  single  rays  to  the  light;  the  uneducated  must  by  tedious  and 
partial  communication  of  the  first  elements  of  better  knowledge 
be  made  capable  of  it ;  and  in  the  illumination  of  the  mind,  the 
spirit  of  the  age  must  be  taken  into  account.  What  Jesus  could 
not  himself  perform,  qualified  men,  his  scholars,  must,  after  his  ex- 
ample, take  in  charge.  What  was  given  by  him  at  first  in  indi- 
vidual instances  they  needed  to  reduce  to  general  principles,  and 
bring  to  light  the  inward  and  spiritual  wealth  therein  concealed; 
they  must  accompany  with  proofs  the  leading  doctrines  of  Chris- 


208  APPENDIX. 

tianity  as  its  founder  took  them  into  his  system;  and  when  to 
give  these  proofs  surpassed  the  powers  of  men,  to  represent  the 
doctrines  as  a  piece  of  rational  faith ;  what  Jesus  had  left  dark, 
that  they  were  to  make  clear;  what  he  had  left  indefinite,  that 
they  were  to  define;  the  blanks  left  by  him  to  fill  according  to 
the  spirit  of  his  teaching ;  and  thus  they  were  to  bring  out  of  con- 
cealment the  full  light  which  Jesus  had  made  only  faintly  to 
glimmer  in  his  discourses ;  and  to  teach  without  disguise  that 
the  spirit  of  Christianity  was  quite  irreconcilable  with  that  of 
Judaism,  and  that  the  one  must  entirely  separate  itself  from  the 
other.  Christianity  thus  needed  for  the  development  of  the  great 
principles  that  lay  in  it,  and  for  their  adequate  working-out,  men 
of  talents,  of  acuteness  and  inventive  power,  of  independence  and 
mental  boldness.  Among  the  first  advocates  of  Christianity,  whose 
writings  we  possess,  John  and  Paul  were,  in  these  respects,  the 
most  distinguished  "  ("  Eiuleituug  in  das  Neue  Testament,"  vol. 
lii.,  pp.  1,  2). 

NOTE  I.     Page  150. 

THE   ALLEGED   PANTHEISM   OF   LESSING. 

OUR  chief  if  not  sole  authority  for  the  conversion  of  Lessing  to 
pantheism  is  the  well-known  philosopher  F.  H.  Jacobi,  who  after- 
wards rose  to  such  distinction  as  the  opponent  of  the  Absolutist 
systems  of  Schelling  and  Hegel,  and  as  the  defender  of  views  more 
akin  to  the  natural  realism  of  the  Scottish  philosophy.  The  facts 
as  to  Lessing  occur  in  the  work  of  Jacobi  "  On  the  Doctrine  of 
Spinoza  "  ("  Ueber  die  Lehre  des  Spinoza,"  Brcslau,  1789).  They 
amount  to  this,  that  when  Lessing  died.  Mendelssohn  naturally 
thought  of  writing  his  life.  Jacobi,  fearing  that  the  intended 
biographer  might  not  be  aware  of  the  change  which,  as  he  him- 
self judged,  had  passed  upon  the  views  of  Lessing,  briefly  com- 
municated to  him  the  conviction  he  had  reached.  Mendelssohn 
received  the  tidings  with  incredulity,  and  gave  some  hint  that  he 
regarded  the  impression,  which  Jacobi  had  founded  on  personal 
intercourse  with  Lessing,  as  due  only  to  the  extraordinary  power 
of  persiflage  which  the  latter  possessed.  Jacobi,  roused  by  this 
challenge,  entered  into  a  long  statement  and  criticism  of  the  doc- 
trine of  Spinoza,  to  show  that  he  was  a  competent  witness  on  such 
a  point,  and  also  detailed  the  evidence  on  which  he  credited 
Lessing  with  adopting  such  a  scheme.  This  rested  on  conversa- 
tions with  Lessing,  held  in  the  year  1780,  when  Jacobi  had  come 
to  Wolfenbiittel  to  meet  him.  On  the  morning  after  Jacobi's  ar- 
rival, he  had  given  Lessing  to  read  an  early  poem  of  Goethe, 
"Prometheus,"  in  which  Jupiter  is  defied,  worship  of  him  re- 
nounced, and  faith  only  left  in  an  Almighty  Time  and  Eternal 
Fate,  which  had  made  all  things.  Jacobi,  expecting  to  find 


APPENDIX.  209 

Lessing  dissatisfied,  was  surprised  to  hear  him  say,  "  It  is  my 
own  point  of  view.  The  orthodox  ideas  of  the  Deity  are  no 
longer  for  me;  I  cannot  enjoy  them/'Ev  nai  TTCLV.  I  know  nothing 
else.  That  is  the  upshot  of  the  poem,  and  I  must  confess  I  like 
it  very  well.  JACOBI.  Then  you  will  be  tolerably  agreed  with 
Spinoza?  LESSING.  Were  I  to  take  any  name,  it  would  hardly 
be  any  other.  JACOBI.  Spinoza  is  for  me  good  in  his  way ;  but  it 
is  a  poor  salvation  that  we  find  in  his  name.  LESSING.  Yes,  if 
you  will  have  it  so.  ...  And  yet  ...  Do  you  know  anything 
better?"  ("  Ueber  die  Lehre,"  etc.,  p.  22).  Next  day,  and  several 
days  afterwards,  the  conversation  was  renewed,  Jacobi,  among 
other  things,  telling  Lessing  that  he  had  conic  to  seek  help  from 
him  against  Spinoza,  and  the  latter  replying  that  there  was  no 
other  philosophy  worthy  of  the  name;  while  Jacobi  still  main- 
tained that,  however  much  he  had  learned  from  him,  especially 
as  to  the  inadmissibility  of  reasoning  and  logical  deduction  when 
applied  to  ultimate  beliefs,  he  found  it  necessary  to  escape  from 
him,  and  reach  the  "  world  of  faith  by  a  kind  of  salto  mortale,  so 
as  to  rest  in  final  causes  and  free-will."  The  end  of  a  conver- 
sation is  all  that  needs  to  be  farther  here  quoted:  "LESSING. 
Well,  very  well ;  I  can  turn  to  good  account  all  that  you  say ;  but 
I  cannot  go  along  with  you  in  reaching  your  result.  I  like  your 
salto  mortale  not  amiss;  and  I  understand  how  a  man  with  a  head 
may  prefer  this  head-over-heels  leap  to  get  out  of  a  fix.  Take  me 
along  with  you,  if  it  be  possible.  JACOBI.  If  you  will  only  mount 
the  elastic  springboard  that  drives  me  on,  the  thing  is  done  with- 
out more  difficulty.  LESSING.  Yes,  but  even  then  the  leap  in  the 
air  would  be  required  ;  and  for  this  I  can  no  longer  trust  my  aged 
limbs  and  my  heavy  head  "  ("  Ueber  die  Lehre,"  etc.,  p.  44).  Such 
is  this  curious  revelation  ;  and  it  may  be  added  that,  while  subse- 
quent research  and  criticism  have  hardly  assigned  to  it  the  de- 
cisive weight  which  Jacobi  ascribes,  it  confirms  the  impression 
otherwise  gained  of  Lessing's  inward  unsettlement,  and  of  his 
tendency,  in  his  own  language,  to  put  systems  together  only  to 
tear  them  in  pieces.  This  question  is  discussed  in  Mr.  Sime's  able 
work  on  Lessing,  vol.  ii.,  p.  303. 

NOTE  K.     Page  168. 

A    CRITICAL    THEORY    OF    THE     GOSPELS     NECESSARY    TO    A 
LIFE    OF    CHRIST. 

THE  demand  made  by  Baur  upon  Strauss,  and  referred  to  in 
the  text,  that  a  professed  life  of  Christ,  mythical  or  historical, 
must  be  accompanied  by  a  theory  of  the  Gospels,  seems  so  reason- 
able, and  has  been  so  generally  accepted  by  scholars  of  all  classes, 
Strauss  included,  that  it  is  rather  surprising  to  find  it  evaded  in 
the  well-known  and  able  work  "Ecce  Homo."  This  volume, 


210  APPENDIX. 

while  opening  out  fresli  and  interesting  points  of  view,  and  sepa- 
rating itself  by  a  wide  interval  by  an  avowed  belief  in  the  miracles 
of  Christ,  from  the  French  and  German  authors  that  support  the 
standard  of  rationalism,  has  generally  been  held  to  fail  in  main- 
taining silence  as  to  the  true  rank  of  Christ's  person ;  nor  do  the 
author's  explanations  in  justification  of  his  reserve,  as  given  in  the 
Preface  to  his  fifth  edition  (London,  1868),  appear  to  remove  the 
difficulty.  But  it  is,  if  possible,  more  remarkable  that  he  should 
discuss  his  topic  without  stating  any  theory  as  to  the  age  or  gen- 
uineness of  the  Gospels,  their  relation  to  each  other,  and  their 
historical  authority.  On  this  subject,  also,  in  the  same  preface, 
he  has  offered  an  explanation  which  will  probably  be  as  little  ac- 
cepted ;  it  is  to  the  effect  that  his  book  contains  no  "  criticism  of 
documents,"  because  the  author  finds  a  "rudiment  of  certainty  " 
"in  the  consent  of  all  the  witnesses;"  and  accordingly  he  takes 
the  Gospel  of  Mark  as  the  basis  of  certain  propositions  which, 
"  unanimously  attested,"  are  numerous  enough  to  afford  an  out- 
line of  Christ's  life  sufficient  for  his  purpose. 

Now,  it  will  probably  be  felt,  even  should  the  induction  from 
Mark  be  accurate,  and  the  evangelic  agreement  so  far  allowed, 
that  this  procedure  is  too  slight  and  summary  in  a  case  where  the 
author  himself  admits  that  the  veracity  of  his  witnesses  "  has  been 
strongly  impeached  by  critics,  both  on  the  ground  of  internal  dis- 
crepancies and  of  the  intrinsic  improbability  of  their  story."  It 
does  not  seem  possible,  without  more  inquiry, "  to  form  a  rudi- 
mentary conception  of  his  [Christ's]  general  character  and  objects" 
"  while  the  vexed  critical  questions  remain  in  abejTance."  The 
mere  agreement  of  four  professed  historians,  up  to  a  certain  limit, 
is  no  certain  basis  of  history,  as  all  now  admit  in  regard  to  the 
consent  of  writers  as  to  the  early  years  of  Rome.  Hence  our 
author  fortifies  his  position  in  the  outset  by  simply  assuming  of 
the  four  evangelists  that  they,  "  in  probable  nearness  to  the  events 
they  record,  and  means  of  acquiring  information,  belong  to  the 
better  class  of  historical  witnesses."  This  will  be  readily  admit- 
ted by  those  who  believe  already  the  minimum  extracted  from  the 
four  Gospels ;  but  only  on  the  ground  of  critical  inquiries  such  as 
the  author  has  not  entered  into.  By  others,  till  the  evidence  of 
age,  genuineness,  and  early  reception  in  the  case  of  the  Gospels, 
and  especially  of  competency  on  the  part  of  their  authors,  has 
been  made  out,  the  mere  agreement  as  to  Christ  will  have  no 
weight  whatever — unless  as  derived  from  the  wonderfulness  of 
the  character — or,  at  best,  only  as  presumption  of  truth.  The 
wrork,  therefore,  of  the  author  of  "  Ecce  Homo  "  hangs  in  the  air, 
or  rests  on  an  assumption  which  in  this  critical  age  is  hardly  safe 
or  desirable. 

Besides,  while  it  may  be  granted  that  with  approved  historians 
a  certain  minimum  is  established  by  their  consent,  it  is  not  con- 
sidered true  to  history,  or  the  best  way  of  gaining  real  insight,  to 


APPENDIX.  ,211 

leave  out  all  that  is  not  common  to  all  narrators.  Socrates  could 
not  be  thus  understood,  nor  Luther,  nor  Samuel  Johnson.  Even 
Kenan  cannot  write  the  life  of  Christ  without  drawing  on  the 
fourth  Gospel,  and  justifying  it  by  critical  researches.  The  facts 
would  become,  on  this  principle  of  unanimous  agreement,  well  or 
ill  attested,  as  the  historians  diminished  or  multiplied  ;  for  the 
minimum  of  agreement  would  be  less  with  eight  than  with  four. 
This  is  therefore  an  uncritical  principle ;  and,  though  it  may  seem 
to  open  an  easy  escape,  cannot  warrant  us  to  dispense  with  a 
critical  theory  of  the  Gospels,  and  an  effort,  not  to  sink  the  dif- 
ferences of  the  evangelists,  but  to  harmonize  them  and  to  incor- 
porate them  into  one  history. 

NOTE  L.     Page  172. 

THE  QUARREL  OF  STRAUSS  WITH  RATIONALISM. 

IT  cannot  be  denied  that  Strauss  has  done  service  in  illustrating, 
both  by  argument  and  example,  the  ultimate  tendencies  of  ration-  s> 
alism.  His  complaints  against  its  prevailing  indecision  and  halt-  A 
ing  between  opinions  are  one  of  the  most  characteristic  features 
of  his  style.  The  only  great  exception  is  his  justification  of  the 
compliances  of  Reimarus  with  all  the  Christian  professions  and 
usages  which  his  Deistic  creed  excluded.  But,  ordinarily,  Strauss  X 
strikes  a  bolder  note  of  rebellion  against  conventionalism  and  com- 
promise, sounding  through  the  ranks  of  doubt  and  negation,  "  To 
your  tents,  O  Israel !"  This  is  the  spirit  in  which  he  condemns 
Ewald,  Hase,  and  even  Baur  (the  stroke  would  also  have  fallen  on 
Keim),  for  their  ambiguities  in  regard  to  the  resurrection  of  Christ; 
and  in  the  same  strain  he  denounces  all  the  practical  efforts  of 
German  Liberals  to  found  a  church  in  which  Christ  shall  have 
still  a  name,  but  Reason  be  the  pontiff  and  dictator.  "From  this 
prejudice  [that  a  visible  religion  is  still  needed]  comes  all  our 
bungling  with  the  Old  Church,  all  the  sewings  and  stitchings  of 
our  mediating  theology.  In  Lessing's  days,  it  was  Revelation  and 
Reason  that  needed  to  be  harmonized ;  now  men  prate  of  the  mod- 
ern problem  '  of  reconciling  liberal  culture  with  Christian  piety.' 
The  attempt  is  not  in  the  least  more  rational  or  practicable  than 
in  the  time  of  Lessing.  We  come  to  this  at  last;  if  the  old  faith 
was  absurd,  so  is  the  modernized,  that  of  the  Protefttanten-Verein, 
and  of  the  Jena  Declaration ists,  and  that  in  a  twofold  and  three- 
fold degree.  The  old  Bible  faith  only  contradicted  reason,  but 
not  itself;  the  new  contradicts  itself  in  all  its  parts ;  how,  then,  can 
reason  be  on  its  side?  The  most  consistent  procedure  is  that  of 
the  Free  Congregations — so  called — that  stand  quite  outside  of 
dogmatic  tradition,  on  the  ground  of  rational  thought,  natural  sci- 
ence, and  history.  That  is,  no  doubt,  firm  ground,  but  no  ground 
for  a  religious  society.  I  have  repeatedly  attended  the  service  of 


212  APPENDIX. 

the  Free  Congregation  in  Berlin,  and  have  found  it  terribly  dry 
and  unedifying.  I  sighed  usually  for  some  allusion  to  the  Bible 
legend  or  the  Christian  year,  to  gain  something  for  fancy  or  heart, 
but  the  refreshment  was  denied.  No.  This  will  not  do.  Alter 
one  lias  carried  off  bodily  the  church  building,  to  hold  upon  the 
bare  and  naked  site  an  open-air  conference  is  mournful  to  ghast- 
liness.  Either  all  or  nothing.  As  a  rule,  the  founding  of  such  so- 
cieties is  more  the  work  of  ministers,  who,  having  broken  with 
the  churches,  want  to  keep  up  some  semblance  of  spiritual  func- 
tion, than  due  to  any  need  of  laymen,  who,  when  estranged  from 
the  Church,  rather  give  up  religious  service  altogether  "  ("  Dcr  alte 
und  der  neue  Glaube,"  pp.  297,  298). 

NOTE  M.     Page  189. 

JOHN    STUART    MILL?S    LAST   WORD    ON    THE    CHARACTER    OF 
CHRIST. 

THERE  is  an  undoubted  progress  in  Mr.  Mill's  views  of  the  char- 
acter of  Christ,  at  least  as  summed  up  in  accepting  Christian  mo- 
rality, beyond  what  appeared  in  his  essay  on  ''Liberty."  There, 
no  doubt,  he  was  careful  to  guard  himself  by  distinguishing  be- 
tween the  morality  of  the  Church  and  that  of  its  Founder.  The 
charges  of  passivity,  asceticism,  and  other  evil  tendencies,  he  di- 
rected rather  against  what  Christianity  became  than  against  what 
it  was  meant  to  be.  Still,  he  held  strong  language  in  regard  to  the 
defectiveness  of  "recorded  deliverances"  of  Christ  as  summing  up 
morality,  though  he  granted  (however  mistakenly)  that  Christ 
meant  these  to  be  supplied  from  other  quarters.  lie  even  c;oes  so 
far  as  to  charge  on  the  Bible  the  absence  of  any  rule  as  to  public 
life  comparable  to  the  precept  in  the  Koran,  "A  ruler  who  ap- 
points any  man  to  an  office,  when  there  is  in  his  dominions  anoth- 
er man  better  qualified  for  it,  sins  against  God  and  against  the 
State;"  forgetful  that  this  was  included  in  Christ's  golden  rule, 
to  say  nothing  of  Paul's  doctrine  of  magistrates  being  a  terror  to 
the  evil  and  a  praise  to  the  good.  Nor  does  he,  in  his  estimate 
even  of  the  moral  teaching  of  Christ  in  its  parts,  rise  to  any  of 
those  warm  utterances,  in  his  essay  on  "Liberty,"  which  break  out 
even  from  Strauss,  or  go  beyond  general  admiration.  It  is,  there- 
fore, all  the  more  welcome  to  find  in  his  last  essay  so  strong  and 
unqualified  a  recognition,  which  surely  carries  with  it  the  suffi- 
ciency of  Christ's  "recorded  deliverances"  taken  in  connection 
with  his  life,  and  retracts  what  Mr.  Mill  had  said.  "  that  many  es- 
sential elements  of  the  highest  morality  are  not  provided  for/ 'and 
that  other  ethics  "than  any  which  can  be  evolved  from  exclusive- 
ly Christian  sources  must  exist  side  by  side  with  Christian  ethics 
to  produce  the  moral  regeneration  of  mankind"  ("Essay  on  Lib- 
erty," pp.  19,  20.  People's  edition). 


APPENDIX.  213 

Few  things  are  more  striking  than  this  tendency  of  the  most 
competent  minds  in  every  age  to  unite,  in  spite  of  every  other 
shortcoming,  in  rendering  homage  to  the  moral  greatness  and  even 
completeness  of  the  character  of  Christ ;  and  here,  though  Mr.  Mill 
has  not  reached,  he  has  approached  the  unequalled  tribute  of  Kant, 
who,  when  his  own  name  was  indiscreetly  placed  by  his  admirer 
and  future  biographer  Borovvskiin  too  near  conjunction  with  that 
of  Christ,  rebuked  the  act;  and,  speaking  of  the  two  names,  said, 
"The  one  is  holy;  the  other  is  that  of  a  poor  bungler  doing  his 
best  to  interpret  him  "  (Namen,  davon  der  cine  geheiligt,  der  an- 
dere  aber  eines  armen  ihn  nach  Vermogen  auslegenden  Stiimpers 
ist)  ("An  den  Kirchenrath  Borowski,"  1792,  vol.  xi.,p.  131.  Ro- 
senkranz). 

NOTE  K     Page  189. 


How  near  the  rationalist  interpretation,  when  fair,  may  again 
approach  the  orthodox  is  seen  in  this  striking  passage,  which  con- 
trasts strongly  with  the  moral  allegories  of  Kant  and  "virtue"  of 
Mill :  "  What  the  '  works  of  the  law  '  ought  to  have  accomplished, 
but  what  'our  own  righteousness'  failed  to  achieve,  must  now,  as 
the  '  righteousness  of  God,'  be  worked  by  faith ;  hence  what  works 
wanted,  faith  must  possess ;  but  even  faith  by  itself  has  not  this 
reconciling  power  in  itself;  it  is  all  that  it  is,  only  through  the  ob- 
ject to  which  it  turns,  and  hence  there  must  lie  in  the  death  of 
Christ  that  which  makes  it  able  to  fulfil  the  end  which  the  law 
with  its  works  failed  to  accomplish.  The  apostle  expresses  most 
directly  the  relation  of  the  death  of  Christ  to  the  law  in  Gal.  iii., 
13 — '  Christ  has  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law,'  "  etc.  .  . . 
"  This  curse  Christ  has  taken  on  himself,  since  he  suffered  death, 
the  penalty  imposed  by  law  on  the  sins  of  men.  .  .  .  Man  is  thus 
free  from  the  curse  of  the  law.  .  .  .  This  freedom  is  enjoyed  by 
men,  only  in  so  far  as  Christ  has  died  for  them  ;  but  if  he  be  thus 
dead,  the  reciprocal  relation  between  him  and  them  must  come 
into  consciousness  and  be  recognized  by  them  ;  they  must,  in  or- 
der to  appropriate  what  lie  has  done,  be  able  to  know  themselves 
one  with  him.  This  relation  is  faith ;  only  through  faith  in  him 
and  his  death  on  the  cross  for  them  are  they  free  from  the  curse 
of  the  law;  faith  is  thus  the  union  of  men  with  Christ,  whereby 
the  redemption  from  law  by  the  death  of  Christ  becomes  individ- 
ualized. .  .  .  What  the  law  could,  through  its  constant  non-fulfil- 
ment, not  effect,  the  death  of  Christ  effects  by  the  setting-aside  of 
the  law — that  is,  without  the  law,  but  only  in  so  far  as  that  death' 
is  the  object  of  faith.  .  .  .  The  chief  text  in  which  this  is  more  fully 
set  forth  by  the  apostle  is  Rom.  iii.,  21-26.  Men  'are  justified 
freely  by  the  redemption  that  is  in  Christ  Jesus,'  etc.  Two  points 
are  here  to  be  distinguished,  which  the  apostle,  in  his  view  of  the 


214  APPENDIX. 

death  of  Christ,  considered  as  the  object  of  faith,  keeps  distinct 
and  illustrates  by  contrast.  An  act  of  redemption  resting  on  the 
death  of  Christ  is  an  act  of  the  free  grace  of  God,  since  men  as 
sinners  can  only  be  justified  by  the  grace  of  God  ;  but  in  the 
death  of  Christ  the  righteousness  of  God  has  also  revealed  itself, 
which  must  make  the  guilt  of  sin  be  followed  by  its  penalty. 
The  righteousness  of  God  must  be  satisfied  in  this  way,  that  the 
penalty  of  sin  is  also  really  borne.  Here,  as  De  Wette  justly  ob- 
serves, is  a  point  of  support  for  Anselm's  theory  of  satisfaction  ; 
but  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  beyond  the  idea  of  '  declaring  '  righte- 
ousness (tv£a£te)  wherein  there  only  lies,  that  God  did  not  in 
himself  and  for  the  sake  of  satisfying  his  righteousness  demand 
such  a  sacrifice  for  the  actual  payment  of  the  penalty  of  sin,  but 
only  to  show  his  righteousness  to  men;  but  this  distinction  in 
the  last  resort  is  unimportant;  since  what  God  does  is  not 
done  for  the  outward  end  of  a  mere  li/fctgig,  but  must  have  its 
objective  ground  in  his  nature.  Since  it  was  irreconcilable  with 
the  idea  of  Divine  justice  to  leave  past  sins  unpunished,  Christ 
needed  to  die  penally  for  the  sins  of  men.  It  is  not  meant  to  be 
said  that,  in  the  nature  of  God,  his  judicial  righteousness,  his 
wrath  against  men,  an  obstacle  opposed  to  the  forgiveness  of  sin 
needed  to  be  removed  by  Christ's  death.  God  himself  did  not 
need  to  be  first  reconciled,  and  when  the  apostle  speaks  of  a  KaraX- 
ij,  Kara\\arr€<r0at,  he  at  least  does  not  mean  such  a  reconcilia- 


tion as  would  amount  to  a  change  of  feeling  towards  men.  . 
All  that  the  righteousness  of  God  demands  in  the  death  of  Jesus 
can  itself  only  be  regarded  as  the  efflux  of  divine  grace.  The  de- 
claring of  righteousness  in  the  death  of  Jesus  could  not  have  come 
to  pass  if  God,  before  he  showed  himself  the  Righteous  One,  had 
not  been  the  Gracious  One,  who  gave  the  greatest  proof  of  his 
grace  in  this,  that  he  inflicted  the  penalty  of  sin,  so  far  as  for 
righteousness'  sake  it  could  not  be  spared,  not  on  man  himself, 
but  on  another  in  his  room.  This  leads  us  from  the  idea  of  satis- 
faction to  that  which  is  most  intimately  connected  with  it,  substi- 
tution. .  .  .  This  is  most  distinctly  brought  out  in  2  Cor.  v.  14, 
where  the  apostle,  out  of  the  statement  '  One  died  for  all,'  draws 
the  immediate  conclusion,  '  dpa  oi  TTOLVTZS  air'iQavov.'1  We  must 
not  here  think  of  spiritual  death,  as  in  Rom.  vi.  2,  or  of  an  obliga- 
tion to  die  literally  ;  but  it  is  said  absolutely  that  what  holds  of 
one  holds  of  all,  and  for  this  reason,  as  the  article  shows,  that  these 
fire  the  definite  Trairee;  that  is,  those  whose  place  the  One  assumes. 
Only  as  he  dies  in  their  stead,  and  for  them,  are  they  also  dead  — 
that  is,  so  far  as  only  the  One  is  actually  dead  ;  but  they  all  are  in 
him  ideally  contained  —  can  they,  if  not  actually,  yet  really,  because 
on  account  of  him  who  is,  in  their  room  and  for  them,  dead,  be 
themselves  regarded  as  dead.  From  the  idea  of  substitution  flows 
the  double  consequence,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  One,  who  must 
take  the  place  of  many  others  to  act  for  them,  is  the  same  in  nat- 


APPENDIX.  215 

ure  with  them;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  he  excels  them  in 
having  that  which  they  want,  and  the  want  of  which  makes  it 
necessary  that  he  take  their  place.  If  Christ  have  died  for  the 
sins  of  men,  he  must  himself  have  been  without  sin,  that  his  death, 
which  could  have  been  no  sacrifice  for  himself,  might  stand  as  the 
penalty  of  the  sin  of  many.  Hence  it  is  only  the  development  of 
the  idea  of  substitution  in  2  Cor.  v.  14,  when  in  verse  21  the  apos- 
tle says,  '  God  hath  made  him  who  knew  no  sin,'  etc.  .  .  .  God 
made  him  a/iajorm,  that  we  might  be  Sucaiorrvvi]  0eou  Iv  avr^ — 
might  be  what  we  ought  to  be,  in  order  to  stand  to  God  in  the 
relation  adequate  to  his  idea.  .  .  .  This  leads  us  back  to  faith. 
Faith  is  the  subjective  condition  on  which  alone  man  can  enter 
into  the  relation  so  expressed.  .  .  .  The  Pauline  doctrine  must 
suppose  as  actual  what  in  itself  does  not  exist.  Its  SiKaiovaQai  is 
no  actual  righteous  being,  but  a  mere  righteous  holding,  or  declar- 
ing, and  faith,  as  the  principle  of  this  tiiKaiovaBai  is  merely  the  firm 
apprehension,  in  view  of  Christ,  that  what  exists  not  in  itself  nev- 
ertheless is.  Not  only  has  man  most  certainly,  in  'justification 
by  faith,'  no  cause  of  'boasting,'  as  in  'justification  by  works' 
(Rom.  iv.  1),  but  he  has,  at  tlie  same  time,  nothing  in  himself  that 
could  put  him  in  the  adequate  relation  to  God  demanded  by 
StKaiovffOai ;  for  how  could  faith,  as  the  mere  opinion  that  some- 
thing is  as  it  ought  to  be,  when  the  exact  opposite  is  the  case, 
have  any  instrumental  power  to  bring  about  such  a  relation? 
This  is  the  extreme  point  where  faith,  in  the  merely  putative 
sense,  as  something  without  contents,  seems  to  lose  all  reality; 
and  yet  the  necessity  lies  clearly  before  us  that  faith,  if  it  is  to  be 
the  principle  of  ciicaiovaOai,  must  have  the  contents  which  shall 
first  give  it  reality.  Whence,  then,  shall  faith  get  these  contents  ? 
When  the  apostle  (Rom.  iv.  5)  says  that  'to  him  that  bclieveth 
on  him  that  justifieth  the  ungodly,  his  faith  is  counted  for  right- 
eousness,' he  regards  the  faith  that  is  so  counted  as  '  righteous- 
ness,' as  itself  'righteousness,'  as  the  subjective  condition  of 
SticaiovvOai :  fairth  is  as  'righteousness,' the  moral  quality  under 
condition  of  which  man  can  come  into  that  adequate  relation 
towards  God  which  belongs  to  the  idea  of  SiKaiovaOai.  The  moral 
element  of  faith  can  only  lie  in  this  point,  that  the  believer,  not 
according  to  Riickert  on  Rom.  iv.  5,  has  the  wish,  though  not 
4  righteous,'  to  become  so,  for  that  does  not  belong  to  this  pas- 
sage, but  trusts  in  him  that  'justifies  the  ifngodly,' that  the  'un- 
godly' is  no  longer  such,  but  'righteous;'  yet  how  can  he  believe 
this  without  knowing  the  ground  on  which  this  faith  rests  ?  The 
ground  on  which  this  faith  rests  can  only  be  Christ;  but  since  the 
believer  makes  Christ  the  contents  of  his  faith,  that  faith  '  reck- 
oned' as  'righteousness,' or  the  'righteousness'  existing  in  mere 
'  faith,'  in  it  merely  supposed  or  conceived,  becomes  a  reality. 
One  cannot" believe  in  Christ  without  knowing  himself  one  with 
him,  and  in  this  sense  of  oneness  he  is  conscious  of  that  as  iinma- 


216 


APPENDIX. 


nent  in  his  own  consciousness,  which  forms  the  proper  object  of 
his  faith  in  Christ.  .  .  .  His  death  is  the  reason  why  we,  since  we 
are  now  free  from  all  the  guilt  of  sin,  can  be  the  same  as  he  is  — 
without  sin;  and  can,  as  righteous,  stand  in  the  same  adequate 
relation  to  God  in  which  he  does"  ("Der  Apostel  Paulus,"  pp. 
537-547.  Stuttgart,  1845).  Though  this  extract  from  the  leader 
of  the  Tubingen  theology  is  not  a  model  of  clearness,  it  sufficient- 
ly recalls  Luther  to  excite  the  hope  that  Christianity  may  be  again 
revealed  "  IK  TrtVrewc  «<'£  Tn'cmi/,"  and  not  a  a  system  of  morality, 
but  of  salvation. 


*$**& 


THE    END. 


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